Education, Politics And War

EDUCATION, POLITICS

AND

WAR

BY

S. RADHAKRISHNAN

THE

INTERNATIONAL BOOK SERVICE

POONA 4 ( India )

First Published in India, September 1944

Published by

♦ Mr. V. N. Dixit, for

The International Book Service.
Poona 4 (India)

Printed by

S, R. Sardesai, I). A., LL.B.,
Samarth Bharat Press,

41 Budhwar. Poona 2

CONTENTS

Page

What British People Ought to Know ... ... 1

Democracy : A Habit of Mind ... ... 10

Religion and Politics ... ... ... 26

Indians in South Africa ... ... ... 47

Acid Test of British Honesty ..• ... 54

Self-Government is the Right Thing for India ... 60

Federation of Free Nations ... ... ... 61

Opportunism is not Statesmanship ... ... 6.3

Culture not National ... ... ... 66

A Call' to Britain ... ... ... 72

Education, Politics and War ... ... 75

Education and Spiritual Freedom ... ... 91

Truth Alone Conquers : Not Falsehood ... Ill

Confession of Moral Failure of Britain in India ... 120

' Function of Universities ... ... ... 124

Purpose of Education ... ... ... 129

Hindu-Muslim Relations ... ... ... 136

•Gandhiji and Malaviyaji ... ... ... 152

Religion : A Plea for Sanity ... ... 157

Freedom is Something Deep and Fundamental ... 165

Universities ... ... ... 170

India’s Heritage ... ... ... 179

Bengal Famine and Indian Politics ... ... 187

Religion and Social Service ... ... 199

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT
TO KNOW*

I am glad to participate in this function as it gives
me an opportunity for expressing iny appreciation ol the
work of the Congress and my respect for the Premier
of Madras, Sri C. Rajagopalachari. There is an ap-
propriateness in having this portrait in Gokhale Hall,
as there is what may lie called the Gokhale tradition in
Congress politics, and Air. Rajagopalachari is the ablest
exponent of it. Gandhiji has always owned (jokhale as his
political guru and the line of descent from Gokhale
through Gandhiji to Mr. Rajagopalachari is straight and
clear. Gokhale was the first Indian leader who visualised
the need for a set of political workers who would adopt
the spirit of renunciation, a set of political sanvydsins
or dedicated souls, who would work with detachment and
devotion for the welfare and freedom of the country.
Gandhiji is undoubtedly the greatest of such savfiydsins.
Of the Congress workers in general — I do not deny there
are some who have joined the Congress organisation for
positions and careers, some others who are in it for the
sake of excitement and adventure it offers to otherwise
dull and placid lives — the hulk have assumed poverty,
have suffered privation, have endured trials and troubles
in ITe and borne witness to the faith in them by lives
of struggle and sacrifice. Among such men Sri Raja-
gopalachari stands in the forefront. ( Loud cheers. )

* Speech delivered at the unveiling of the portrait of Sri C.
Rajagopalachari, at the Gokhale Hall, Madras, on the 15th of July 1938.

2

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

Spiritualising politics, introducing principles of
religion into public life, that had been the motto which
rJokhale adopted in founding the Servants of India
Society. Religion includes faith in human brotherhood,
and politics is the most effective means of rendering it
into visible form. Politics is but applied religion.

The Congress party fought the elections in 1937 on a
definite programme to combat the new constitution, and
end it, thus paving the way for Indian independence.
After the elections, the All-India Congress Com-
mittee debated the question of office acceptance for
nearly ten hours and decided by a majority vote of 135
to 78 for office acceptance under certain conditions.
Doubt and discussion about the use of special powers in
regard to the constitutional activities of ministers were
terminated by the Viceroy’s statement on 22nd June that
all Governors would be anxious not merely not to pro-
voke conflicts witli their ministers to wdiatever party
their ministers belong, but to leave nothing undone to
avoid or resolve such conflicts. Congress ministries were
immediately formed in seven out of eleven provinces
and have a good deal of social and agrarian legislation to
their credit.

The implications of the acceptance of office by the
Congress are threefold. In the first place, from Non-co-
operation and total rejection of the constitution to
acceptance of office and working the constitution for all
it is worth, is a remarkable change of heart and indicates
that the Congress in spite of all difficulties and dangers,
thought that some good could be derived from the con-

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

3

stitution. However one may disguise it, it is a virtual
surrender of the Congress policy of destroying the con-
stitution and a victory for constitutionalism which is
in the Gokhale line.

Secondly, the daily working of the constitution, and
day to day contacts with the civil services revealed that
the services had people who were prepared to carry out
loyally the measures initiated by the Government, even
though these measures may not have their sympathy
and agreement. The power of resistance, the feeling
of hostility towards the British thus got unconsciously
diminished when the Congress ministers had to lub
shoulders with their opponents day after day.

Thirdly, there was the anxiety of the Congress to
have time to implement their political programmes and
show to the world that they were good not only in opposi-
tion but also in government, and in running the admini-
stration and in improving the material and moral well-
being of the people whose destinies were committed to
their charge. They were, therefore, persuaded to avoid
dead-locks and try to have time to put their principles
into practice. That is w^hy one large section of the
Congress is anxious to amend the federal part of the
constitution so as to bring it nearer the popular demand.

The federal part of the constitution suffers from
certain grave defects. Feudal elements arc drawn into
popular assemblies and would control British India while
British India would have no power to control them.
There are the safeguards devised to protect and preserve

4

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

British interests, financial, economic and political. There
were the reserved subjects — army, external affairs, etc.
What can we do with such a federal scheme ?

One section said, that after all, Indian Princes were
also Indian ; they might be patriotic and adopt popular
representation with regard to their nominees. We need
not imagine that they will be more recalcitrant than the
British in regard to translcr of power to popular re^
prescntatives. As for safeguards an assurance might he
got that they would not be used in regard to the con-
stitutional activities ot the Federal Ministers. With
regard to reserve powers too, tlie Act was not final and
immutable and might be altered if steady pressure was
applied to the British. Suggestions for the amendment
of the Act or even the framing of a new constitution, by
the Federal Legislatures may be welcomed and seriously
considered by the British Parliament.

There were thus many of the opinion that it would
be possible to continue working in the local assemblies
and to get an assurance that the Act would be amended
before long. There were others who felt that already
tlieir power of '.resistance had got reduced and if they
compromised with a thing so retrograde and reactionary
they would be merely strengthening the hands of British
Imperialism. The present Act is no answer to the
political demand for self-government or the economic
demand for social justice. It would be a shame, these
people stated, for them to continue longer as a subject
nation and it was high time they severed British connec-
tion and set up a social democracy in this country.

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

In between these two lines of thouglit, was Gandhiji
who stood for making the best use of wliat they liad and
advancing further. In a great speech before the Second
Round Table Conference Gandhiji said that time was
when he prided himself on being a British subject, but
that now he would be rather a rebel than a subject.
Gandhiji had said then that he would love to be a British
citizen and expressed the hope that the partnership
between Britain and India might be an indissoluble one.
Again in February 1937, Gandhiji had declared that if
Dominion Status according to the Statute of Westminster
were offered him, he would whole-heartedly accept it.
There is no reason to think that he had changed his
opinion. Whether the section represented by Gandhiji
would win or others would, depended not on the
Indians, but on the British.

If you watch closely and catch a lace in repose of any
intelligent young man or woman, you will see there is
a shade which is not quite natural to youth, an under-
current of sorrow that he belongs to a country vast,
populous and ancient, that is still a subject nation. It is
there, that impersonal detached shadow, and will be there
so long as the present condition continues. The shame
of subjection is written across the faces of young in-
telligent Indians and that is what gives meaning to the
demand for independence.

It is no use talking to Indians about their ingratitude
for the benefits Britain has conferred on India. She has
built railways, telegraphs, irrigation works, has sys-
tematised law and made administration efficient. Italy

6

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

will do that for Abyssinia and Japan for Manchukuo*
Any one w^ho wdshes to run an efficient administration
will have to use all the modern appliances for his owm
purposes. These material benefits are conferred at the
cost of our manhood, at the price of our dignity. The
kingdoms of this w^orld are not a compensation for the
loss of one’s soul. So long as the present relations con-
tinue, there will be a sense of unnaturalness, and an
unconscious spirit of condescension w'orse than contempt
or hatred on the part of the British and servility on the
part of the Indian. That is the psychological problem.

During my recent stay in Europe I had on numerous
occasions discussed the Indian problem with many British
publicists and I have tried to impress on them to the
best of my ability the urgent need for satisfying the
Indian demand. I put it to them, “To-day in India
there is at the head of the movement a leader and a saint,
the like of wdiom is not born every year or generation or
even every century and he demands only Dominion
Status — the substance of Independence . It is just ; it is
expedient ; it is inevitable, sooner or later. It is bound
to come. History is for it and the forces of the w^orld
are with it. A European crisis will precipitate it. If you do
not deal wdth the matter when he lives, when he is lead-
ing the movement on absolutely non-violent lines, and
bring about a just and honourable settlement, I shudder
to think w^hat the consequences will be.”

I explained to them in detail that, if Gandhiji failed,
the people of India would feel : Here was a leader who
adopted the non-violent method and failed to get the

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

7

barest justice from the British. And then non-violence
would receive a set-back. Egypt, Ireland, South Africa
will be quoted to prove that the British never granted
anything in response to pleas of justice but yielded to
expediency when they were pushed into a corner. If
Gandhiji fails, if non-violence receives a set-back, world
conscience will support the claim of this country, and a
major conflict of a most unprecedented character is
bound to be provoked between this country and Britain.
The Great Indian Mutiny or the Non-co-operation move-
ment would be nothing, compared to that which would
break out if the just and reasonable demands of the
Indians were not granted.

Office acceptance has brought about a change in the
psychology of our people and has developed in them a
new attitude of mind. The power of resistance of the
people is bound to grow unabated. The spread of politi-
cal consciousness to the masses of the country will stand
to the credit of the great Congress and its decision to take
up office. I do not think if it had abstained from office
we would have witnessed the same results in the re-
moulding of the psychology of the people as has now
been achieved.

I still hope that Britain would not miss the present
golden opportunity of granting India her demand and
developing a strong self-governing country in the East
which would stand for ideals of peace, brotherhood and
democracy and be of the greatest assistance not only to
Britain but to the world at large. Why should not Britain
do in peaceful, undisturbed, undistracted times what she

8

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

would have to do when the world is thrown into chaos ?
Are we to wait till then to get elementary justice for a
people united in their demand ?

I am not quite familiar with the details of the politi-
cal situation in India and the different fronts on which
Congress men are now fighting — Prohibition, Hindustani,
new systems of education and so on — though I know that
they are all intended to serve a great end. In the present
state of our country, what is required is real guidance
and direction. If the ‘dictator’ is democratic at heart,
it does not matter much if he appears to be a dictator.
For it only means, at any rate in our country, that he has
a clear mind and fixed purpose. I am a great believer
in democracy not because it is a fine political arrangement
but it is the highest religion. The human individual is
the highest, the most concrete embodiment of the Spirit
on earth and anything which hurts his individuality or
damages his dignity is undemocratic and irreligious.

There are people to-day in India who are anxious to
introduce rigid doctrines into the country and talk of
Communism, Fascism, etc. Communism and Fascism are
divided in all essentials except in respect of one — that
they both reject the conception of democracy and believe
in the regimentation and moulding of human beings into
a pattern. Liberals failed because they w^ere not suffi-
ciently socialistic. Communists failed because they were
not sufficiently democratic. It w^as essential for them in
India therefore to adopt advanced socialistic legislation
to-day and lift up squalor and unhappiness from the lives
of people. India should not be deemed to be introduc-
ing anything radical or revolutionary, simply because of

WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE OUGHT TO KNOW

9

certain socialist measures. Even in Fascist and Nazi
states, even in democratic England and America, there is
more socialistic legislation than we find in our country.

If Government is interested in raising the general
level of the people, it has to be bold and go forward with
vision and courage. Differences between ‘ right * and
‘ left ’ and between Congressmen and Congress Socialists
I am not able to see myself. Congress Socialists are also
pledged to non-violence and democracy. Otherwise they
may be Socialists but not Congress Socialists. The term
‘ Congress Socialists ’ means that they want a socialism
which does not fetter the civil liberties of the individual.
That is not the kind of socialism that prevails elsewhere.
We have seen revolutions and counter-revolutions and
seen some countries of Europe reduced to a cockpit of
warring creeds. The same might result here if we start on
highly revolutionary doctrines, adopted from outside. It
is essential for us to develop on our own foundations and
not copy the doctrines and ideologies of other countries.

A silent social revolution is now taking place in
India. And when this silent revolution is proceeding it
is essential that the movement should be guided by
balanced minds, by men of vision and courage, faith and
power and our Premier possesses these qualities in
abundance. His picture here will be a powerful reminder
to students who come to this Hall of his qualities of
balance and courage, vision and strength. These qualities
will help us to weld ourselves into a corporate man-
hood which will mean the emancipation of our country.
Freedom is an achievement, not a gift.

DEMOCRACY; A HABIT OF MIND*

Ladies and Gentlemen^

I am deeply sensible of the honour that the authori-
ties of the Andhra Mahasabha have done me by electing
me the President of this important session of the Con-
ference. I had the pleasure of presiding over the
conference of the Mahasabha at Nandyal exactly ten years
ago, and to be called upon to preside once again at a time
of such promise and hope is a privilege which I greatly
appreciate.

1. THB WORT.O SITUATION

A world bristling with armaments and gigantic in-
tolerances, where all men, women and children are
instructed in the use of gas masks, where public streets are
provided with underground refuges, and private houses
are equipped with gas-proof rooms, is conclusive evidence
of the insecurity and fear in which we live. No intelligent
Indian can help admiring the great races that live in
Europe and their noble and exalted achievements in arts
and sciences. His heart is wrung when he sees dark
clouds massing on the horizon. It is, therefore, a matter
of great relief that the clouds have dispersed and the
hostilities avoided, at any rate for the present. The
actual settlement, however, is not altogether a triumph

* Presidential address delivered at the Annual Session of Andhra,
Mahasabha, Madras, in September 1938.

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

11

of peace. By localising conflicts, by yielding to the bully,
we establish that the barbarous occupies a large space in
our nature, and that we are ready to prostrate overselves
before the representatives of brute force. If wars are to
be avoided, it is essential for us to utilise the intervals
of peace for the development of a new world. History
reveals'that periodic sanguinary upheavals have been a
constant feature of our social order. For civilization
to be betrayed again and again, there must be something
coarse at the very centre of it, and that is its slave basis
and tribal patriotism. So long as the social order tolerates
privileged classes and subject nations, wars are inevitable.
We have to pay the price for world peace by setting
up social democracies, by surrendering control over
subject nations and by submitting national sovereignties
to international control. Nations, like individuals, arc
made not only by what they acquire but by what they
resign. We cannot sit on a powder magazine and smoke
a pipe of peace. If we wish to make it impossible for
any nation to grab what it wants by force, we must make
it possible for every nation to achieve what is just with-
out force.

2. THE INDIAN PROBLEM

A Strong self-governing India will be of the greatest
advantage to the peace of the world. If the sensitive
opinion of this country is to be drawn into a firm allegiance
to the ideals of the British Commonwealth, they must
become flesh. When India asks for self-government which
is her natural right, she is demanding that Britain should
give a most practical and concrete expression to those

12

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

ideals. If excuses are invented for postponing the just
solution of the Indian problem, critics will not be wanting
who wdll declare that the British Commonwealth is still
aggressively imperialistic in character, and its desire for
peace is not due to the growth of moral sense or love of
democracy but to the development of military aviation
and the disappearance of its long treasured insularity.
In the interests of India, Britain and the world it is
necessary to end the tangle and set up a free India.

If the Indian National Congress protests against the
present form of federal constitution, it is not protesting
against the idea of federation. The problems of India,
military, economic, and financial relate to the whole
country, and in regard to them no distinction can be made
between States and Provinces. A federal constitution is
inevitable. But the proposed federation is unacceptable
to advanced political opinion on account of its obvious
defects, viz., that it brings together autocratic and de-
mocratic elements into an incongruous framework, that it
does not give any responsibility at the centre, that the
safeguards take away the substance of freedom. I hope
most sincerely tfiat the British statesmen are aware that
these misgivings are legitimate and that it is essential to
establish full responsible government in the country at
the earliest opportunity. To be wise in time is the
highest wisdom.

3. SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM

A nation which has to devote the best part of its time
and energy to political matters, whether by force or by
freewu'll, is in a wrong condition. If India wishes to be

DEMOCRACY ! A HABIT OF MIND

13

free, it is with the single desire of fostering a higher
quality of life among its citizens. The aim of democracy
is to foster a condition of life in which the State is a con-
venience and not an end, in which public will fairly
expressed is paramount, in which the operation of law
is calculable, not arbitrary and in which freedom of body,
thouglit, speech and association is secured unless it can
be proved to contravene the law or be subversive of
public welfare.

VVe cannot have an effective democracy so long as its
material basis, which is its economy, is defective. All
forms of government today are agreed in taking steps for
the improvement of material conditions and standards of
living. Even Fascism, if we arc to believe its theoretical
exponents, is Socialism. Its aim is to control the means
of production and distribution for the general benefit
of the community, and therefore to restrict all forms of
monopoly and individual power. There is nothing wrong
in the ideal which attempts to make the State the owner
of all public utilities for the benefit of all. The peasants
form the backbone of the Indian community, and they
have a right to the full fruits of their labour. The State
today, with its elaborate machinery, can collect its
revenues much more speedily and effectively than through
the aid of a class of middlemen. Essential and equitable
reforms in the matter of the relations of the landlord and
the tenant arc the only safeguard against revolution. The
Congress is aware of the injustice of the present position
but believes in the education of public opinion and the
conversion of the landlords for remedying it. If we wish
to avoid greater dangers, we must admit the paramountcy

14

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

of the claim of the tiller of the soil to the fruits of his
labour. Even in the matter of the State ownership of
public utilities, if the vast majority of voters return
members who stand for this principle, Government can
transfer the legal ownership to the State, compensating
those from whom property is taken, if not adequately,^
at least decently.

I must, however, warn those who are for the introduc-
tion of rigid doctrines from outside into our country.
The National Congress which is pledged to non-violence
cannot support usurpation, much less humiliation and
insult. It cannot believe that class-war is inevitable, for
there is nothing inevitable in social phenomena. We can-
not build a democratic State on the foundation of force.
If once we develop a tradition of violence, it will become
difficult to abandon it. If forcible expropriation is
adopted as in Russia, contemporary history tells us that
there will be either a Fascist or a Nazi dictatorship or
civil war as in Spain. Violence has for its effect counter-
violence and produces an atmosphere of suspicion,
resentment, and hatred. There arc some, I am sorry
to say, who believe, that while India is their mother-
country, Russia is their fatherland. Recent events show
that even in Russia there have been great departures from
the pure gospel of Communism. The methods of violence,
class hatred and irreligion adopted there have made Russia
an outcast among the nations of the world. I do not
want to be misunderstood. lam all for an equalitarian
society and I believe that it is not only not inconsistent
with but is actually demanded by the highest religion.
All attempts at establishing a social democracy, a more

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

15

equal distribution of wealth and opportunity, are a
genuine manifestation of the religious spirit.

Guhyam brahma tad idam vo bravimi
na manushat shresthataram hi kinchit.

There is nothing higher than man. It is religious
idealism that has enabled India to endure and surv^ive
centuries of misrule, wars and pestilence and if it dis-
appears, India will lose her historic character. It will be
the greatest defeat that India will suffer, the defeat of
the soul.

4. COMMUNALISM

Another obstacle to the growth of an effective democ-
racy in India is the communal divisions. One of the
most painful and reactionary features of the Government
of India Act is the constitutional justification of the
country’s political life along communal lines. The
Moslems of India are closer to their Hindu neighbours by
race and habits than to the Muslims across the frontier.
We have identical interests. With the increase of sociali-
stic legislation, with the reduction of high salaries, with a
clearer understanding of political influence as an opportu-
nity of service and not power, the present artificial lines
of cleavage may yield to political divisions.

5. NATIVE STATES

There is next the divergence between British India
and the Native States and, if it is wide, it will imperil
any federal constitution, India cannot be half free and
half slave. We find in a number of States agitation for
representative institutions, and it sometimes takes un-
desirable lin^s provoking j-epr^ssion. by th^ .governments

16

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

concerned. It is unnecessary for the Native States to
adopt the usual circle of agitation, repression and reform.
Fools learn by their own experience, but wise men learn
from other people’s experience. The responsibility for
reactionary constitutions cannot be thrown on the British
Government. The paramount power cannot support the
rulers of Native States, it they deny to their subjects the
very rights which have been established by parliamentary
authority throughout British India. It is, therefore, essen-
tial that Native States should grant the basic liberties to
their subjects and establish representative institutions.
In their present form they are archaic survivals of an
extinct feudal age, and,* if they do not reckon with the
rising tide of democracy and make suitable adjustments,
their chances of survival are not bright.

(). SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY

Apart from these constitutional difficulties, we have
to realise that democracy is not a mere political arrange-
ment but a habit of mind. It is easy to acquire the forms
of democracy but not so easy to get its spirit, that sensi-
tive adjustment of the self to the infinitely varied
demands of other persons. Essentially, a democrat is
one who has that trait of humility, the power to put him-
self in the second place, to believe that he may possibly
be mistaken and his opponent probably right. But events
that are happening in organisations, small and great, make
one suspect whether we have developed the democratic
frame of mind wffiich expresses itself in what we may call
political good manners. Only the other day in the Bengal
Legislative Assembly, an honourable member read a

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

17

letter, which, in the opinion of the Committee of Privi-
leges “ did not exist and does not exist

We, in the Andhra country, are not, I am afraid, free
from these defects. In our crowds we find signs of
indiscipline and unruliness. Subjection to discipline and
direction is not our strong point. We must realise that
superiority to one’s emotions is the mark of a cultivated
mind. We cannot improve the country faster than we
can improve ourselves. Our leaders and managers of
public opinion have a great responsibility. They must
not contract men’s outlook, confirm their prejudices or
inflame their passions.

7. THE ANDHRA MOVEMENT

I am aware of the qualities of mind and spirit that
are characteristic of the Andhra people. Relatively
speaking their freedom from prejudice, their spirit of
sacrifice, their enthusiasm for social service and their
intense patriotism are remarkable. During the days of
the Non-co-operation movement, these qualities found a
concentrated expression, and there is hardly a village in
the Andhra country which has not contributed in men
and money to the national struggle. I have always felt
that the differences between the Brahmin and the non-
Brahmin, the Hindu and the Moslem, are much less
acute in the Andhra country, and I believe that it will
be possible to weld the people of the Andhra area into a
corporate manhood for political purposes. It is not for
me to speak about the intellectual and artistic life
of the Andhras. If there is an agitation today for the
formation of a separate Andhra province, it is due largely
E. P. \V. 2

18

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

to the intense desire to develop the cultural and
artistic distinctiveness of the Andhra people.

The movement is not to be regarded as inconsistent
with Indian Nationalism any more than the freedom of
India movement is to be regarded as inconsistent with
the interests of humanity. It is not motived by any
antipathy or ill-will to our Tamil neighbours. For
centuries past Andhras have lived in the Tamil land, and
Dravids have settled in the Telugii country, and perfect
understanding and fellowship have governed their mutual
relations. Any sense of irritation which may now and
then be discerned is due to the unfortunate scramble for
posts, and I am persuaded that with the formation of
a separate province, it will disappear altogether and the
two communities will live in fraternity and friendship.

8. THE ANDHRA PROVINCE

The agitation for the Andhra Province is not to be
regarded as tlie out burst of a sudden caprice. It has had
a long history. The first Andhra conference met in the
year 1913 and in 1914 at Bezwada a resolution w^as passed
asking for the formation of a separate province for the
Telugu districts. And this resolution was repeated every
year after that. In 1917 the Congress constituted the
Andhra districts into a separate unit for its purposes.
The Andhra representatives waited in deputation on the
late Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford and pressed the
claims for a province. Enthusiasm for the Andhra pro-
vince abated a little when the energies of the Andhra
leaders were engaged by the Non-co-operation movement
of 1920 and onwards. But the demand for a separate

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

19

province was never abandoned. On 16-2 1927 a resolu-
tion was moved in the Council of State for the formation
of the Telugu districts into a separate province, though it
was thrown out on tlic ground that the motion should
have been moved in the Provincial Council. On 1+-3-1927
the Madras Legislative Council passed a resolution in
favour of formation of provinces on linguistic lines. This
principle was re-affirmed by the Madras Legislative
Council in 1928 on a cut motion. Again in 1933 the
Madras Council passed a resolution that steps be taken
for creating the Andhra and the Karnataka areas as
separate administrative units. Representations were also
made at the Round Table Conference and some leading
Andhras waited in deputation on Lord Lothian. But
nothing came out of these endeavours.

May I, with the utmost respect, say that this failure
to achieve our ends is largely due to our own apathy.
Our leaders have been influential in the Madras Govern-
ment from the year 1920 down to the Interim Ministry
of 1937, except for a short interval. They were and are
patriotic Andhras and for some reason, whicli I am not
able to understand, they demanded a province when out
of power but took no steps to accomplish the idea when
in power. When the eleven Telugu districts were formed
into a compact University area, this could well have been
the preparation fora province. We succeeded in break-
ing the area into two and having the University only for
the coastal districts. Emotion and idealism are good but
disciplined emotion and directed idealism are better.

I do not think that it is necessary for me to make out
a case here for the formation of an Andhra Province. It is

20

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

now a part of the accepted policy of the Government and
of nationalist opinion alike. Perhaps, you will permit me
to quote a few sentences from the speech of our Premier
the Hon. Mr. C. Rajagopalachari, during the recent dis-
cussion in the Madras Legislative Assembly. He said,
“ Let me now refer to the Statutory Commission’s
remarks. By Statutory Commission’s remark?, I mean
the Montagu Report. By that time, this matter was fully
discussed, and what did they say ? They said, ‘ For those
who speak the same language, form a compact self-
contained area so suited and endowed as to be able to
support its existence as a separate province, there is no
doubt that the use of a common speech is a strong and
natural basis for provincial individuality. But it is not
the only test. Race, religion, economic interests, geogra-
phical contiguity, due balance between country and town;
between coast and interior, may all have to be relevant.
The most important of all principles for practical purposes
is the largest possible measure of general agreement on
the changes proposed, both on the side w^hich is gain-
ing, and, on the side, that is the area, that is losing
advantage. Judged by every one of these tests, including
the latter portion, judging the question on every one of
these ideals, separately and as a whole, the claim of the
Andhras stancls very good. There the use of a common
speech is a strong and natural basis. As regards the other
tests, namely, race, religion, economic interests, geo-
graphical contiguity and due balance between country
and town, on all these points there is no cause for op-
posing the claim for a separate Andhra province. There-
fore it is but right to pass such a resolution. It was the

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

21

conclusion arrived at on a general agreement and by the
Statutory Commission who examined the whole question.
Some of these tests may stand against the formation of
some other provinces, in some respects. But so far as
the claim for an Andhra province is concerned, every one
of the points in the proposal may be tested by every one
of these considerations, and it would still pass. There-
fore, Sir, I support this proposition and hope the House
will accept it.*' I may just add that, having regard to
the tendency towards decentralisation on territorial as
well as administrative lines, which is so marked in all
progressive democracies, it is desirable to split up a large
area like the Madras Presidency into two compact and
strong units. A large homogeneous population inhabiting
a contiguous country of vast dimensions knit together by
close affinities of race, language and tradition with hope-
ful chances of industrial and economic development
constitute, in my opinion, a most formidable justification
for the creation of a separate province. With the develop-
ment of democratic institutions and the increasing parti-
cipation of the people in public affairs it will be more
useful to conduct the business of the government in the
language of the area. It is an area covering over 75,000 sq.
miles. Its population is nearly 17 millions. It will be
much larger than Assam, and Baluchistan and almost
equal to Bengal in size. With such subsidy as we should
get from the Central Government and our share of pro-
vincial revenues, I hope, I will not be charged with
rashness, if I say that the future Andhra Province will be
self-supporting, though to my mind the problem is not

22

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

one of finance or administrative management but of
psychology and sentiment,

I must, however, here refer to one or two questions.
I’he first relates to the Ceded Districts. It is futile to
ignore that there is a strong body of opinion in these
districts against the formation of a separate province for
the Telugu area. They are afraid that the Andhras of the
coastal districts who are more advanced and articulate
might adopt an attitude of condescension towards them
on account of their backwardness in certain points. I do
hope that our friends of the Ceded Districts will not
approach their coastal brethren in a mood of inferiority or
look upon them as strangers. The two groups speak the
same language, inherit the same traditions, and have vital
interests in common. If we are not able to unite, that
only shows that we are incapable of the elementary arts
of social adjustment and political craftsmanship. I am
pleased to hear that their apprehensions arc considerably
allayed by the Srec Bhag pact. In any case I am anxious
that the Ceded Districts should not prove an Ulster in
the Andhra country.

All these difficulties could be obviated if Madras is
made the capital of the future Andhra Province. Madras
occupies a fairly central position and serves as a link
between the Ceded Districts and the coastal districts. It
has had for a long time important Andhra affiliations. In
its origin and development, the Andhras have played a
great part. In the City itself we have a lakh and a half of
Telugus. It seems to be the most natural centre for the
Andhra Ptovince. If, however, for any reason this idea

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

23

does not commend itself to the Government, the City
can be divided into two parts and two capitals can be set
up. Sucli a demarcation of the City will have to be done
by a commission charged with the fixing up of boundaries.
I do not think that there are any constitutional or practical
difficulties in the matter of the location ol the Andhra
capital i.i Madras. There are several instances where
cities that are almost one have two different jurisdictions
and work under two administrative units. The instances
of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, of Bangalore City and
Bangalore Cantonment, of Britisli and Native Cochin arc
well known. Business and commercial interests will
welcome the proposal of the Andlira capital in Madras and
the interests of economy in expenditure will justify it.

It is a pleasure to know that the Madras Government
have written strongly in favour of the constitution of the
Andhra Province. I am not, however, very happy about
the resolution which the Madras Assembly adopted. It
reads “ This Assembly recommends to th.e Government
that the view of tliis Chamber of tlie Legislature of
IVIadras be communicated under section 290 of the
Government of India Act 1935 to His Majesty in Council
that steps may be taken as early as possible for the
constitution of separate provinces so as to place under
separate autonomous provincial administrations the areas,
wherein the languages predominantly spoken are
Tamil, Telogu, Kannada and . Malayalam.’’ This re-
solution does not carry us far. It takes up a specific
demand and lifts it into the inanity of a general principle.
If, in addition to the principle, the resolution demanded
the creation of an Andhra province it would have satisfied

24

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIl^D

the Andhra sentiment. I can understand the mood of
disillusion and chagrin in which the Prime Minister found
the Andhra districts during his recent tour. I cannot,
however, refrain from entering my strong protest against
the disrespectful demonstrations that were directed
against him. No situation, however, charged with political
acrimony, can justify a lapse from good manners. From
the civilized we expect at least civility.

There are those who believe that the Congress Work-
ing Committee’s resolution of 28- 7-1938 is not quite fair
to the Andhras. It does not show an adequate apprecia-
tion of the intensity and urgency of the Andhra problem.
The Working Committee is naturally anxious that the
demand for separate provinces should not engage the
energies of the Congress workers to an extent that will
take away from concentration on the general Indian
question. The way in which the Andhra leaders have all
these years subordinated their local interests to those of
the nation is a proof, if proof were needed, that the
Andhras at any rate are not likely to relax their efforts on
the national issue. I am convinced that the agitation for a
separate province is not likely to prejudice in any manner
the work for Indian freedom. I hope I will be pardoned
if I say that I do not see any justification for postponing
action on the Andhra question till after the settlement of
the Indian problem. Besides, the creation of provinces
is a matter relating to the provinces and so belongs to that
part of the Constitution in respect of which the Congress
is already in power in our province. And I am not
exaggerating when I say that even in the Imperial As-
sembly the Congress has considerable power and can,

DEMOCRACY : A HABIT OF MIND

25

if it is so advised, take steps to push through the ideas of
the Madras Government in this matter.

Under section 290 of the present Act the new pro-
vince can be created by means of an Order-in-Council of
His Majesty. The section says that the Secretary of State
should consult the Federal Legislature and the Provincial
Legislature including the respective governments. It is,
therefore, our duty to bring such pressure as we can to
bear on the authorities. I should like to respect the
wishes of the Working Committee and so long as they are
not sympathetic to the idea of a deputation to the Secre-
tary of State, I do not think that it is advisable for us
to think of such deputations. Possibly, a council of action
may be set up for taking such steps as they deem necessary
for the accomplishment of this idea and in consonance
with the resolutions of this Conference. But that is a
matter for the Conference to decide.

I may, however, say that with a Premier who has
openly expressed his sympathy with our cause, a
Governor who, I am sure, is very friendly to our aspira-
tions, and a Secretary of State who, I know, will view
our appeal with the utmost sympathy, our cause is bound
to succeed. Let us press for it with all the energy and
enthusiasm we can mobilise.

RELIGION AND POLITICS*

May 1 express to you, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, my
cordial thanks tor inviting me to address this Convocation.
It is a matter of regret to me that I was not able to
undertake this pleasant duty in previous years. I am
touched by the many signs of courtesy and consideration
which J had received at your hands. I feel it an honour
to be associated with this University as its Honorary
University Professor of Philosophy and a member of its
academic and administrative bodies. You will forgive
me if I have not found it possible to show my interest
in tin's great University in any effective manner,

I

The Soul of a University

The most valuable thing about a University is its
atmosphere, something in its life that enters into charac-
ter and influences everything in after years. While this
University emphasises the religious basis of education,
it gives equal importance to the practical side. Its
Engineering and Technological departments are the pride
of our country. It imparts to you the arts and discipline
necessary for taking part in the new industrial age. It
attempts to make you into good and efficient men with
directing ability and productive power. But you will
forgive a mere student of philosophy if he affirms that
India will find a way out of her trials and achieve once

* Convocation Address, Benares Hindu University, 17th Decem-
ber 1938.

26

RELIGION AND POLITICS

27

again the distinction of a great civilisation if she works
for the attainment, not only of those tilings which are
necessary for existence but also for those finer and de-
licate values which constitute “ the grace of life This
essential side of University education is fostered by its
teachers who create the spirit of the place. It is your
good fortbne to work in a University presided over by a
Kulapati who reminds you of the great teachers of old.
Your Vice-Cliancellor is a national asset, a sage of simple
life and great heart, a dreamer and a builder. Though
the founder of tliis University and a maker of modern
India, he is untouched by personal ambition, and animated
in all his work by laith in God and love of country. Ilis
example is a buttress against cynicism and spiritual
despair, tor, in the last essence, whether one is prosper-
ous and successful is infinitely less important to tlie true
self than belief in mankind and its destiny. Who holds
firm to this will never lose the sweetness and savour of
life and your Vice-Chancellor has never faltered in his
faith.

11

The Basis of Religion

I offer my warmest congratulations to all of you who
are receiving degrees to-day, specially those who have
won prizes and medals. Let them not, however, think
more highly of themselves than they ought to. University
distinctions are not everything in life. There is some-
thing which is much more important and that is life
itself. Your work in this University is utterly vain,
unless in the years to come you shall find the lessons you

28

RELIGION AND POLITICS

have learnt here of some value for the grim and relentless
business of actual living. If your education does not
help you to live well, if it does not teach you to get on
with others, it has failed of its function. This social
virtue does not depend on learning, on the number of
books you read or the number of facts which you know
but on the proper understanding of human nature. In
the Chdndogya Upanisad, Narada appeals to Sanatkumara
that he is sorrowful though he knows all the branches of
knowledge. “lam merely a knower of texts ( mantravid ),
not a knower of self ( atmavid ).“ I am afraid that our
schools and Universities, our libraries and laboratories,
all this immense apparatus and effort do not seem to have
given us greater disinterestedness, greater humanity.

When I was a student nearly thirty years ago, we had
great faith in the ideals of science and education, demo-
cracy and peace — with the growth of science we thought
we would conquer pain ; with the spread of education
and enlightenment, we imagined that we would banish
ignorance and superstition ; with the extension of demo-
cratic institutions we hoped that we would remove all
injustice and move towards an earthly paradise : with
the increase of humanitarian sentiments we thought wars
would be abolished. We believed that we could use
intelligence in our dealings with physical environment,
our social institutions and our inmost selves — we assumed
that it was all a question of technology or engineering
like control of floods or improvement of communications.
Science has increased its range and scope, education has
spread widely but we are not so sure that life is richer
or the future brighter. The failure of the intellectual

RELIGION AND POLITICS

29

devices to improve our social relations has brought dis-
appointment to the human soul. We find that the creation
of ideal human relations is a different problem from the
mastery of nature. The problem of living has become
much more complicated and the mood in which we have
to face it is not that of the self-complacent intellectual.
If mankind finds itself in a mess, if things which should
contribute to humanity’s wealth have become an occasion
for failing, it is because our conceptions of life are
superficial. Human nature is not matter of surfaces but
of strata, of external experience, of reflective conscious-
ness, of moral and aesthetic apprehension, of religious
insight. Every stratum has its own life. We have diseases
of the body as well as of the mind. If cold and catarrh
are illnesses of physical nature, if error, prejudice and
falsehood are defects of our mind, lust, anger and jealousy
are deformations of our heart. However much we may
progress in the conquest of natural forces or in the con-
trol of social injustices, a very important part of the
human problem will consist in the disciplining of our
wayward desires and the achievement of an attitude of
poise toward the inevitable limitations of finite existence.

You will be able to cope with the new problems, if
you have caught a little of the spirit of this place. The
true significance of a city or a country as of a person lies
not in its face but in its spirit, not in its geography but
in its history. Here in this city you feel the unseen pre-
sence of sages and saints who rose from time to eternity,
and fashioned the destiny of a race. When your Vice-
Chancellor started the idea of a Hindu University, there

30

RELIGION AND POLITICS

were many who thought that he was entering into con-
troversial regions and it would be difficult to give the
students the essentials of the Hindu faith in a non-
sectarian manner. The difficulty of Hinduism, as of
other religions, has been the emphasis on the insignificant.
We quarrel about the casual interpretations, forms and
ceremonies instead of insisting on the unifying devotion
to the permanent truths. The essence of Hinduism is a
living faith in spirit and man’s capacity to assimilate it.
Rites, forms, ceremonies, institutions and programmes
are subordinate to this end. The central fact of religion
is the felt existence within us of an abounding inner life
which transcends consciousness, a secret spirit which
haunts us like a ghost or a dream. We feel certain powers
moving within us, we know not what, we know not why.
These vague intuitions, these faint dreams are the far cries
of the Universal dwelling in us and the function of re-
ligion is to make our souls sensitive to the Universal. In
man alone docs the Universal come to consciousness.
He alone is aware that there is a universe, that it has a
history and may have a destiny. He feels most fiercely
the adventure of awareness, the possibility of doom or
deliverance. Religion appeals to the inward man, a
stranger who has no traffic with this world. It is the core
and centre of his being in which he strives to set himself
in direct relation to the All. To develop the spiritual
dimension we may have to withdraw our souls from the
flux of existence, endure an agony of experience or travel
barren and stony wastes of despair, When once this
recognition arises, pride, prejudice, and privilege fall
away and a new humility is born in the soul.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

31

The natural desire of man is to he good and seek the
true. No teaching can create this desire out of tlie void.
No truth can be taught unless the potentiality for know-
ing it is already there in the spirit of the pupil. The
instinct of spiritual life is in hunum nature. Religion is
not a mere eccentricity, not an historical accident, not a
psychological device, not an escape mechanism, not an
economic lubricant induced by an indilferent world.
It is an integral element of human nature, an intimation
of destiny, a perception of the value of the individual,
an awareness of the importance of human choice for the
future of the world. It is a cleansing of man’s soul,
a sense for the mystery of the universe, a feeling of
tenderness and compassion for one’s fcllowmen and the
humbler creatures of life. To have religious men as the
components of a society makes all the difference in the
life of that society.

The uninterrupted continuity of Hindu civilisation
bears witness to its vitality. The vitality of a living
organism is to be measured by its power to carry off the
waste matter which would prevent its proper functioning.
When it fails to do this, it ceases to be creative, it is
really dead, only a corpse. The most urgent question
for Hindu Society to-day is whether it has life enough
in it to overcome the obstructions within its own
organism. If we try to embalm the present social struc-
ture, if we strive to defend the separatist tendencies of
caste and the disabilities of the untouchables, we will be
disloyal to the spirit of Hinduism. We cannot defend an
unjust order of things and praise God. Faith in the one
Supreme means that we, His off-spring, are of one body,

32

RELIGION AND POLITICS

of one flesh — the Brahman and the Harijan, the black, the
yellow and the white whose prayers go up to one God
under different names. It is our own flesh that is torn
when the shell explodes, that is pierced by the thrusting
bayonet. The dignity of the individual who is the lamp
of spirit must be the paramount consideration, if society
is to survive. I have no doubt that when the world gets
together and when a creative commonwealth is projected,
India would be called upon to supply an indispensable
part of its design for living.

Ill

The International Situation

The world has moved through different periods and
we are now in what may be called the first era of world
civilisation. The invention and spread of new means of
rapid communication affecting both the movement of
persons and the transfer of ideas have made the world into
a single whole. ’ This intermingling of races and cultures
makes it possible for the w^orld to grow into a moral
community, a single commonw'ealth in w'hich the human
race will find ordered peace, settled government, material
prosperity, the reign of law and freedom for all, which
is the goal towards which all previous history has been
leading. The instinct for such a community is in human
nature. The ordinary human being is decent, is peace-
fully inclined, hates bloodshed, has no joy in battle.
This fundamental humanity has kept our race going. It
is to be seen in the mother at the cradle of her child, in
the ploughman at his furrow, in the scientist in his labora-
tory and in the young and the old when they love and

RELIGION AND POLITICS

33

worship. The love of man, this taith in the moral
structure of society has upheld the spirit of man against
many tyrannies and shall uphold it still.

Men, as we find them, however, are artificial pro-
ducts. We are made one way and society remakes us in
another. . Our relationships with Icllow-heings have
become unnatural and artificial. We are made to feel,
not that we are human but that we are Hindu or Moslem,
French or German, Jew or Gentile. Our barbarous laws
and institutions seduce us from our natural feelings of
sympathy and fellowship. Fear, suspicion and resent-
ment arise and wars which become each year more
destructive are waged for the glory of the fictional
abstractions of race and nation, class and creed. I’he
world cannot permanently organise its life in an unjust
and unnatural way without reaping chaos and conflict.
The root cause of our present trouble is an inter-
dependent world worked on a particularist basis. If
moral principles are set at naught, if we are not faithful
to the instinct of the common man, nemesis will over-
take us.

We are filled with despair by the violence of the con-
temporary world. Recent events in China, Abyssinia,
Czeckoslovakia and Spain constitute a betrayal of moral
values. Faith and hope have all but succumbed. Honour
and magnanimity have decayed. The hot embers of
sullen discontent and savage hatred smoulder every-
where. A peace which arises from mere weariness of
war and founded on international injustice and political

E. P. W. 3

34

RELIGION AND POLITICS

opportunism has no element of permanence in it. The
immense armaments in process of anxious accumulation
in Great Britain, France and the United States of America
do not give us any feeling of security. The world is
shaken and exhausted and man has become an anguished
being, living in the uncertainty of to-morrow, left alien
in a world where there is neither joy nor love nor light
nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain. The world
is on fire and the sparks are flying. What is there to
cling to in a world of madness and doom, of waste and
hideousness? The whole machinery of modern civilisa-
tion is failing to perform even the basic function of
keeping men alive. A world in agony asks “ Is civilisa-
tion to end up in a mangled mass of twisted metal and
torn flesh ? This cry of pain is indeed evidence that in
spite of its sickness the body is alive and fighting for life.
Though we must deeply deplore the outlawry, the
savagery, the wantonness of the present, there is hope
in that the fallow ground of the whole world is being
broken up. Broken soil is full of promise.

It is easy to blame the Germans, the Italians and the
Japanese for the present condition of the world, but they
are like ourselves. We, perhaps, in their condition will
do the same. Their weaknesses and virtues are in pro-
found solidarity with our weaknesses and virtues. The
development is the out-growth of an environment heavily
weighted with tragedy and failure, mistakes and mis*
understandings, resentments and hatreds. Take, for
example, the case of the Germans. They lost a w^ar and
an incompetent government slipped in after the fall of

RELIGION AND POLITICS

35

the monarchy, while the best part of the nation was still
in the front. They suffered ignominy and hardships at
the hands of the victors in the post-war period. They
writhed under military invasion and financial subjection
in peace time. To restore national pride and self-
confidence, to resist the threat of a proletarian philosophy
which increased middle class anxiety, the Nazi move-
ment sprang up. We would not have behaved differently
if v!e were in the position of the Germans. The problem
ahead of us is a universal problem, a problem of
humanity, not of this or that country.

The world has seen a number of civilisations on
which the dust of ages has settled. The jungle has con-
quered their great centres and jackals howl there in the
moonlight. The spade of the archaeologist uncovers for
us dead cities that we may behold in them our pride and
our shame. We assumed that whatever may be the changes
and developments, the solid structure of Western Civi-
lisation was itself enduring and permanent, but we now
see how appallingly insecure it is. The menace of war
has been a writing on the wall. The present world
situation is a spiritual challenge. We must either accept
it or perish. It is not safe to be immoral. Evil systems
inevitably destroy themselves by their own greed and
egotism. Against the rock of moral law, earth’s con-
querors and exploiters hurl themselves eventually to
their own destruction. While yet there is time, there is
not much left, we must take steps to pie\ent the helpless
rush of man to his doom.

76

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Revolutions rest on basic psychological changes in
the minds of men. A certain degree of soul, Ben John-
son maintained, is indispensable to keep the body from
destruction. If we would save the world from decay,
we must do something to it with our spirit. We have
to rebuild the city in the soul which has been so
disastrously invaded by the false gods of pride .and power
and undermined by selfishness and stupidity.

A new generation is growing up with a new aware-
ness of the oneness of humanity. It understands that
peace is a positive achievement, calling for high enter-
prise. It is aware that world peace demands world
justice and the obstacles to it are in the hearts of men
which have been corrupted, in their prides and jealousies,
in their attachment to comforts and possessions at other
people’s expense. National ambitions and racial passions
blind us to real ends and long views. Unless we remove
the sources of injustice and fear, w’e cannot make the
world safe for peace. The history of man has been a
continual struggle between the ideal of a moral com-
munity and the immoral forces of greed, stupidity and
violence, individual and corporate. We must refine the
spirit of patriotism so as to make it a pathway from man
to mankind. A world conference to examine territorial
grievances, control of raw materials and possibilities
of collateral disarmament and establish the freedom of all
nations, smaller great, weak or strong may be summoned
and if the powerful nations approach the task in a
chastened spirit and in the faith that nations like in-
dividuals are great not by what they acquire but by what
they resign, we may get nearer our goal.

RFLIGION AND POLITICS

37

IV

Britain and India

Great Britain can work for a liberal and democratic
civilisation by transforming her empire into a common-
wealth of free nations and that will be her greatest con-
tribution *^0 a better world order. It is diflicult to
understand her foreign policy or her Indian policy. It
is unimaginable how Great Britain and France could view
with indifference, if not sympathy, the consolidation
of the dictatorsliipG. If the present policy is persisted
in, very soon, Holland and Belgium, Switzerland and
Scandinavia will get into the orbit of the Berlin-Rome
axis. Even today the British Government seems to be
genuinely indifferent to the kind of government which
will emerge from the Spanish war. No one can say with
confidence what Great Britain will do in the matter of
the Colonies or German advance into Ukraine. One
explanation is that class feeling has prevailed over
patriotism among the governing classes of Britain.
Another is that the British people have lost their ambi-
tion and their ingrained sense of being the greatest power
in the world and so have yielded to other powers and
themselves suffered a loss of strength and prestige.

In a disordered world we seem to occupy a sheltered
position and enjoy in some measure the amenities of
civilised life. In the British Empire our position is a
junior and subordinate one. So far as our defences go,
w^e are in a helpless condition. Even now a great menace
to the peace and safety of our country is growing up in

38 RELIGION AND POLITICS

the far East and its tremors are felt in Siam and Burma.
Germany is striving to extend her influence through Asia
Minor, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to the frontiers of
India. In the dangerous condition of the world, where
three great powers are acting in concert, adopting the
doctrine of force as the inspiration of their policies,
Britain must reaffirm her faith in freedom and democracy,
not by words but by deeds and weld together the
different dominions into unity on the basis of devotion
to the ideals. Self-interest, international decency and
justice demand the establishment of self-government in
India. The most urgent problem is to work out a federa-
tion, not on the lines of the Government of India Act,
but on lines which will foster and further internal unity
among the different communities and between provinces
and States. So long as India has to submit to a constitu-
tion imposed on her, she is not free. One of the greatest
historians of the world, the German Theodor Mommsen,
emphasises a truth which modern Germany has forgotten
and Great Britain wdll have to remember if her methods
are to be distinguished from those of Germany. “ Ac-
cording to the same law of nature in virtue of which the
smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic
machine, every constitution however defective, which
gives play to the free self-determination of a majority of
citizens infinitely surpasses the most brilliant and humane
absolutism, for the former is capable of development
and therefore living ; the latter is what it is and therefore
dead.*'" If Britain fails to develop in time a strong

History of Ro me Bk. V, Ch. XI E. 7 by W. P. Dickson (1866).

RELIGION AND POLITICS

39

and self-governing India, she cannot escape the destruc-
tion which has overcome empires as proud and seemingly
as firmly rooted as her owm. No nation is fully grown up
until it has been purged of egotism and pride.

V

The Meaning of Democracy

The religious tradition of India justifies democr.cy
and if she has not been faithful to this principle, she has
paid for it by her suffering and subjection. Spirit is
never more persuasive than when it suffers silently
beneath the heel of oppression. Democracy is an achieve-
ment forged in the fires which make a nation's soul.
When I speak of democracy, I am referring not so much
to parliamentary institutions as to the dignity of man,
the recognition of the fundamental right of all men to
develop the possibilities in them. The common man
is not common. He is precious, has in him the power
to assert his nature against the iron web of necessity.
To tear his texture, to trample him in blood and filth is
an unspeakable crime.

There are doubts expressed today about democracy as
a political arrangement. The rise of dictatorships and
the collapse of democracies in Europe have made the
problem an intriguing one. What is it, after all, that the
mass of people desire ? “ As a rule," said Viscount

Bryce, “ that which the mass of any people desires is
not to govern itself but to be well-governed." Totalita-
rian States may claim to offer good government, though
the fundamental assumptions of democracy such as

40

RELIGION AND POLITICS

equality before law, in suffrage, in opportunity are
violated by them. Even in democracies, as recent events
show, we have no popular control over fundamental
questions of policy and direction. Take all in all, in
this imperfect world, democratic government is the most
satisfactory. It is based on the fundamental principles
that, in the long run, government should rest on the
consent of the governed and that there should be free-
dom of expression for minority groups. Without such
freedom, the principle of consent loses its value. In
democratic institutions, there is protection against the
abuse of power. Irresponsible power is bound to be
used in the interests of the group which possesses it.
Again, freedom of expression is the only way by which
we can let truth work on the minds of men. If we re-
press freedom of speech, we make truth subservient to
the interests of the powerful group. The increasing
regimentation of mind and the propaganda by which we
dope the people with false news and keep them ignorant of
the facts even in so called democratic countries, show how
parasitical groups govern in them. A free press is an
essential element of a free country, but it must be a res-
ponsible press. A corrupt press will prison the springs
of social life. Besides, even when democratic government
is inefficient and expensive, it is a process of education
by which people learn to exercise responsibility. Again,
it provides for orderly change. We can transfer power to
other groups without social convulsions. Such peaceful
and orderly changes by the process of law are the founda-
tion of all civilised society. If we discard democracy,
we can bring about changes only by revolutions.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

41

VI

Economic Justice

Democracy does not mean a dead level in character
and contribution, ability and insight. It is an equality
of opportunity in matters of food, health and education.
It implies economic justice. If we arc content with
anything bss, democracy is a mockery. Economic justice
involves a reshaping of the economic order. Capitalism
is criticised from different points of view but here I may
just indicate how it affects a democratic policy of life.
By permitting a staggering degree of inequality with its
inevitable consequences of poverty and lack of oppor-
tunity for masses of men, women and children, it pro-
duces social disturbance. This inequality is morally
dangerous. It encourages the privileged sections of
society to live in waste and luxury, with an utterly false
sense of values, in a callous disregard of wdiat their
superior privilege means to the victims of the process
which accords to them the privileges. We all know
people whom w^ealth and ease have made decadent, who
despise or patronise those presumed to be lower in the
social scale, while acting with becoming humility to those
who are considered to be higher. We cannot run a society
where millions lack what a few people take for granted
as necessities of life. Fellowship is difficult where
classes are separated by snobbishness and bitterness, open
or subdued, is bound to be felt. Again, capitalism
appeals to the acquisitive instincts. While we cannot be
expected to outgrow the profit motive completely, the
other sides of human nature such as loyalty to the com-
munity, desire to do a good job tend to atrophy. Wealth

42

RELIGION AND POLITICS

is regarded as the symbol of success and exploitation is
assumed to be essential for comfort. Besides, political
democracy cannot function properly so long as we have
concentration of economic power in a few, though the
forms of democracy may be kept up. Fear of losing one’s
job or of exposing one’s dependents to starvation is a
terrible threat to personal integrity. Naturally those who
live under such a fear tend to group themselves into
unions and they again cause conflicts. An economic order
based on the social ownership of large sources of wealth
and power would be far less dangerous to ethical life and
more helpful to social fellowship. Comfortable classes
should not proclaim that material things are unimportant.
Their generosity is no substitute for justice which
demands that the economic level of the whole population
should be raised to a point where there will be a decent
standard of life and genuine equal opportunity for all.
Economic rewards should not be divorced from services.
Acquisition of wealth must be contingent on the discharge
of social obligation and profits derived from certain
sources and exceeding a certain amount, must be declared
unlawful. Huge incomes can be restricted by means of
taxes. Taxation is democratic while confiscation is tyran-
nical. A collectivist society becomes tyrannical and
spells great dangers to human life and freedom. But
that is no justification for preserving the status quo, which
does regiment the conditions of life for the masses while
securing freedom for a few. Social revolutions are exe-
cuted by those who are driven by hunger and dreams,
by the felt need and the sure hope. They may face a
hostile and dangerous world but their victory is certain

RELIGION AND POLITICS

43

and it is the path of wisdom to bring about changes by
peaceful and constitutional methods. The programme
of the future cannot be imposed on us by threats. It
will have to be hammered out in the give-and-take of
the political struggle itself. Those who enter it must
do so with a clear mind and a clean conscience.

Economic schemes are relative to the degree of
sociaband economic development of the different com-
munities. The general principles of the ancient Indian
ideal of distributive justice by which not only the la-
bourers and the cultivators but the barbers and the washer-
men, sweepers and watchmen were all allowed a share
in the produce of the field may be modified to suit present
conditions. The different functional groups are not
classes which denote barriers and cleavages. Class in the
sense of a group which makes its own peculiar contribu-
tions to the general welfare is right and legitimate. We
will have different groups of farmers, of weavers, of
lawyers and of doctors. They are different agencies in
the national endeavour. No group, however humble its
work, should inspire aloofness any more than differences
of functions among the members of a cricket team. There
are varying kinds of service but not varying classes of
individuals. Honour and comradeship, humanity and
sympathy are found among all classes. The distribution
of clssses into upper and lower should designate degrees
of development in these qualities and not in their oppo-
sites of greed, selfishness and inhumanity. It is difficult
to make society believe that a sweeper is as necessary
as an engineer so long as society rewards them so un-

44

RELIGION AND POLITICS

equally for their services. While equalisation of rewards
is impossible, the present disparities should be dimi-
nished. But even revolutionary changes in the economic
order can be brought about by means of persuasion.
The innate conservation of the people requires that even
drastic changes should be brought about by constitutional
methods. To decide conflicts by force is to aba»don the
democratic method of reason, conciliation and conference.
In our anxiety to bring about a social revolution, we
should not resort to force and thus destroy the democratic
system. In every society we find an element of force
and an element of persuasion. The better the society
the more it depends on persuasion and the less on force.
It must seek to harmonise the delicately balanced system
between the rights of the individual and the obligations
to society. A society without social impulses cannot
cohere; a society without individual life cannot survive

But democracy is not to be interpreted as a levelling
down. The majority of men and women are not interested
in the higher pursuits of the mind. They hate mental
exercise and love physical enjoyment. If you provide
them with food and drink, sexual enjoyment and noisy
distractions they are perfectly happy. For them the
higher life is unspeakably gloomy. If any one believes
that the social millennium will dawn near if only we have
a sufficiency of material goods for all, I would advise
him to go to any large city and note what the majority
of men and women who have prosperity and leisure do.
To those who have the least spark of humanity, their
contentment with life at the animal level and callousness

RELIGION AND POLITICS

45

to any thing higher seems a dreadful calamity, though
those who are in it sing and laugh and are utterly insensi-
ble to their own misery. If we hav^e headache we leel
the pain but we are painfully unconscious of this ignor-
ance ( ) which has us by the throat. It is the
function of universities to make us conscious of our limi-
tations. .

VIII

Conclusion

It is essential to develop the democratic habit in
dealing with the class conflicts and communal divisions.
This habit is founded on the rarest of all virtues, toler-
ance, which is a symptom of understanding, self-posses-
sion and power. To be tolerant is to be humane and
civilised; to be intolerant is to confess a mean and trivial
spirit. The desire to regulate other people by our own
tastes and opinions is the outcome of a complex ol fear,
jealousy and impudence. To persuade others to one’s
own views is right ; to penalise them if we cannot, is
wrong. India is a mould into which many ditferent pot-
ters poured their clay. Her hospitality towards other
cultures and civilisation is well known and its develop-
ment requires to be encouraged by our schools and
colleges. If we are to pursue the study of religion and
culture in a way appropriate to the age in which we live,
we need the helpful stimulus of contacts. The establish-
ment of a Chair of Islamic civilisation in this university
may be seriously considered.

46

RELIGION AND POLITICS

My young friends, our country is in a state of flux
and you will have to choose with care your path. You
will have to make very hard decisions. There are so
many groups, political and economic, which ask for your
allegiance. And you are young. To be young is to live
in the age of conviction. What one knows one knows
absolutely. There can be no argument about it.^ It just
is so. May I beg you to seek strength in the faith on
which this institution is built and stand up for it and
that is much, for victory is not in our hands.

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA*

I should like to take this opportunity and thank
most cordially the Indian community of South Africa
for their gracious welcome and hospitality to me during
these three or four weeks. I am greatly delighted that
it was possible for me to accept the invitation of my
friend the Agent-General and the Indian community to
spend a part of my Easter vacation in this beautiful
country. The good wife of the Agent-General, Mrs.
Rama Rau, by her devoted care and attention to my fads
and idiocyncracies, has made me feel quite at home in
this distant land. In all the centres I visited the Euro-
pean community treated me as a welcome guest. The
civic receptions in all the chief centres, the University
functions at Capetown and Johannesburg, informal meet-
ings with distinguished representatives of the different
communities including members of the Government,
all marked with great courtesy and consideration, have
given me a memorable experience. It will be invidious
to mention names, nor would it be possible, but let me
express my gratitude to all those high and low, young
and old, who have made my stay here so pleasant and
enjoyable.

European Situation

During the whole time I have been here the Euro-
pean situation has been one of acute tension and anxiety.

* Speech broadcast from the Durban Radio Station on 10th April
1939.

47

48

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

No intelligent Asiatic can help admiring and reverencing
the great races that live in Europe and their noble and
exalted achievements. His heart is wrung when he sees
dark clouds massing on the horizon. Hate is spreading
like a vast black cloud. Terror is becoming the technique
of states. Fear is over the world and our hearts are
failing us — we cannot help asking why we are unable to
save ourselves ; why this incomprehensible world is so
savage and stupid and suffering ; why we make ourselves
responsible for such queer happenings and monstrous
contrasts. We have great forces for increasing the
general welfare, for removing the evils of poverty and
the injustice of national abasement and racial humilia-
tion, for bringing about a more equitable organisation
of human society, but the leadng nations of the world
still cling to the belief that power is the end and object
of national life for which all principles of truth and free-
dom can be sacrificed. The world of nations is like a
nursery, full of perverse, bumptious, ill-tempered
children, nagging one another and making a display of
their toys of earthly possessions thrilled by mere size.

Competition for Material Wealth and Domination

The desperate competition for material wealth and
domination, coupled with the vastly increased capacity
of the human brain for utilising the forces of nature, and
the technique of propaganda has intensified the general
anxiety and oppression, the regime of greed and fear.
We measure the greatness of nations by the wealth of
their possessions, by the extent of their armaments.
Anyone who Has not £ 500 a year is a figure of fun,

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

49

to be sneered at ; any nation which fails to convert her
corporate manhood into a military arm is to be despised.
A wrong system moulds our minds and makes it difficult
if not impossible for even the best and most enlightened
men to act fairly. The greatest impediment to the
advance of civilisation to-day is the old familiar institu-
tions of «race and class to which we are emotionally
attached. They have always brought disastrous con-
sequences. In spite of her great contributions of demo-
cracy, individual freedom, intellectual integrity, the
Greek civilisation passed away as the Greeks could not
combine even among themselves on account of their
loyalty to the city states. Their wealth, their pride,
their glory, their literature and art, had for their shadows
the slavery of large masses, their poverty, their shame.
The Roman gifts to civilisation are of outstanding value,
but the structure of the empire of Rome had completely
ceased to exist by a. d. 500. I'he Pax Romana reigned
but it was the peace of the desert, of sullen acquiescence
and pathetic enslavement. The fall of Rome is not to
be explained solely by the barbarian invasions. Treason
from within was its cause quite as much as danger from
without. In the letters of Sidonius we hear of censor-
ship, of bribery and corruption, of the persecution of
Jews. Modern civilisation is exhibiting to-day all the
features which are strangely similar to the symptoms
which accompany the fall of civilisations, the disappear-
ance of tolerance and of justice, the insensibility to
suffering, love of ease and comfort, selfishness of indivi-
duals and of groups, of the segregation of men on
grounds of blood and soil. A social order, directed to
E. P. W.4

so

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

the good, not of mankind as a whole but of a powerful
privileged few among individuals as well as nations, is
essentially unjust and can only be defended by the
force of arms.

Security Confused with Civilisation

To protect our security, which we confuse with
civilization, we place our trust in outward unspiritual
things, in accumulated wealth and death-dealing weapons.
We persuade our young men to wound and kill, to maim
and destroy as our protection against the victims of our
injustice and greed. If there is not a drastic change in
our thoughts and practice our race may die, not of
natural catastrophe or dread disease, but of so-called
civilisation, which is a compound of human cupidity and
scientific genius. Man as he is, is not the last word of
creation. If he does not, if he cannot control his passions
of greed and egotism, if he does not and cannot abandon
the worship of the fictional abstractions of race and group,
class and nation, he will yield his place to a species more
sensitive and less gross in its nature.

Turning to the East

To-day our civilisation with its military and force-
ful mode of living, faced by the possibility of racial
suicide, is turning to the East in a mood of disenchant-
ment. The Indian civilization is not great in the high
qualities which have made the youthful nations of the
West the dynamic force they have been on the arena of
world history, the quality of ambition and adventure, of
nobility and courage, of public spirit and social enthu-

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

51

siasm. But it has lived long, faced many crises and
preserved its identity. Its age suggests that it has a
sound instinct for life, a strange vitality, a staying power
which has enabled it to adjust itself to social, economic
and political changes. Perhaps one needs a good deal of
suffering and sorrow to learn a little understanding and
tolerance: A spiritual attitude to life has nourished it a
little more persistently. Is it too much to hope that a
proper orientation, literally the values derived from the
Orient, the truths of inner life, of humility and love,
will bring healing and true love to this sorely distracted
and diseased world in which we find ourselves ?

I am an optimist. I have fairh that the spirit of
man cannot be permanently entombed. The secret
solidarity of the human race cannot be abolished by the
passing insanities of the human world. The peoples of
the different countries are anxious to live in peace. They
are unwilling to indulge in hate, suppression and fear of
others which their leaders inculcate. It is not in them to
gloat over the sufferings of others simply because they
do not belong to their race or country, but their social
nature is distorted into queer shapes by the poison poured
into their blood by jingoes in their country. We want
leaders who will cut across the artificial ways of living
which seduce us from the natural springs of life, to re-
cognise that our inhuman attitudes to other races and
nations are no more than artificial masks, sedulously
cultivated by long practice in dissimulation. Racialism
and nationalism which appeal to our baser passions, which
require us to bully and cheat, kill and loot, all with the

52

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

feeling that we are profoundly virtuous and doing God’s
work are abhorrent to the free man. For him all races
and nations lie beneath the same arch of heaven. Every
human being who is not a sadist, is a great deal happier
when he or she is merciful than when he or she is cruel.
It is our nature to be decent and just, but our laws and
institutions exert a steady pressure on us to become worse
than we are. We have to fight for humanity, that is what
w'e arc losing to-day ; the sense of human relationships
with our fellow-mcn, of human responsibility, of human
life.

What we would, that we cannot do. The machine
has made powerless the human will. We have become
conscious or unconscious slaves of necessity, of the esta-
blished atmospliere. We have to recapture our humanity.
These are stirring times when the earth seems to tremble
and the future is big with unknown things. It depends
on each of us what it will be like. Our effort counts.
There are many who are persuaded by despair that there
is no remed}^ against the follies of the modern w^orld but
to escape or destroy. It is not true. There is another
within the reach of all, the principle of love, which has
upheld the spirit of man through many tyrannies, and
shall uphold it still. Let us prefer to be human. Leave
fighting to animals and let us suffer, if need be, as men
for our conscience and for humanity.

I shall not be truthful if I do not say that my Indian
friends in South Africa are smarting under disabilities
and restrictive measures, and feel that the tallest of them

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

53

have to submit to indignities on account of their colour.
A more generous handling of the problems, which are in
all conscience, difficult, is essential. We must have faith
in the capacity of every normal human being, if given a
figeting chance, to become a self-sustaining, self-respect-
ing happy member of society. To weld together into an
organic state the European and the Native, the Coloured
and the Asiatic is a formidable task, but it is not insuper-
able. Tlie differences need not be fused, but they need
not conflict. So long as the wealth, pride and power of
one community are based on the shame, subjugation and
poverty of another, we will have insecurity and fear. No
State can acquiesce in mal-adjustments of wealth and
labour, leisure and opportunity and endure for long.
To make the different communities feel that they belong
to South Africa, to stimulate in them a pride in the
country, to enable them to rise to their full manhood
under its laws and institutions should be the aim of far-
sighted and liberal statesmanship. I have found leaders
of such conviction who feel that moral principle, peace
and tranquility, safety and stability of the State alike
demand a re-ordering on the principles of freedom and
justice for all. It is my earnest hope and prayer that
they may succeed in building up a just and pros-
perous South Africa, for prosperity without justice is
like a house built on sand.

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY*

The international situation is one of neither peace
nor war as the Prime Minister put it. It is uncertain
and anarchical.

Sparks are flying in the Far East, in Danzig and
elsewhere and any moment the world may be on fire.
The leading statesmen of all the nations are aware that
a war between the great powers would mean an oblitera-
tion of civilized values for many decades. Fear of the
tremendous consequences of war is acting as a deterrent.
The one passion of a disinterested soul is for peace.
The determining factor is the negative fear of w^ar and
not the positive love of peace. The present race for
armaments is an illustration for it. If it is not to end
in disaster, an attempt should be made to correct the
crying injustice, even though it may mean a sacrifice
of national interests. If we do not recognize the world
on a just basis but persist in maintaining the status quo
simply because it is to our advantage, we will only post-
pone conflicts but cannot prevent them.

Britain and India

I am sorry to say, that the British are not showing
great wisdom or statesmanship in regard to India. On
May 19 His Majesty the King declared in Canada that
the units of the British Empire are bound together by an

• A statement issued to the Press on arrival from Europe —
Bombay, July 1st, 1939.

54

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY

55

allegiance to common ideals and the adoption of common
principles of Government. The other day the Prime
Minister in his speech at Cardiff complained that it
was not fair to divide the nations of the world into
haves ” and “ have-nots’’, for the British Empire is
dominated by a different ideal. It does not stand for
the exploitation of its possessions, but for their develop-
ment in the interests of their people. The present
opposition to British policy in India is animated by a
faith in these ideals, and “ common principles of govern-
ment”. The scheme of 1935 with its enormous safe-
guards and restrictions intended to ensure stability with
no real parliamentary responsibility at the centre and
with a miscellany of partly democratic and partly auto-
cratic units is not what one w’ould call a democratic con-
stitution. It is not without reason that a recent American
thinker, who argues for a union of democracies deliber-
ately excludes India in his book on Union Now'\
India is the acid test of British honesty. It will not do
to profess faith in democracy and practise undemocratic
methods. Reports reach us of the increasing influence
of Axis powers in India and the only way to terminate
it effectively is to make India feel that England is earnest
about the setting up of a self-governing India.

Muddling Through

Britain adopts a policy of pragmatic empiricism,
what is called muddling through. But she has not always
muddled through to success. History is full of instances
of her failure. The loss of American colonies is the peak
failure. The persistent prejudice against Irish Home

56

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY

Rule all but lost Ireland to the British Commonwealth.
Slowness of evolution is the cause of all revolutions. I
am afraid there is not much time to be lost. India
demands on the part of Britain loyalty to those
“common principles of government” to which the King
referred, an application of them in British India and
Indian States, where Britain is the Paramoupt Power.
If India remains of her own free choice a member of
the British Commonwealth, she will be a bridge between
East and West and contribute to a world understanding
and world peace.

Federation

When the Congress and other political bodies object
to the federal scheme of 1935, they do not object to the
principle of Federation. All sane political think-
ers are agreed that in the dangerous conditions of the
world, the political and administrative unity of India
is an. imperative necessity. We cannot assure any
one that peace and security belong to the natural order
of things. An Indian Army, Navy and Air Force are
essential to maintain internal peace and security frorri
external invasion. It is no answer to say that all these
will take a long time. We have seen nations, both eastern
and western, modernize themselves in a short period.
India is not impressed by the speed and earnestness of
the present policy.

Indian States

Indian States are not radically different in social and
cultural development or patriotic sense from British

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY

57

India. After all they recognize the Paramount Power.
Imitation is the highest form of admiration. True loyalty
to the Paramount Power demands the adoption of the
principles which the British Government was obliged to
adopt where it is directly concerned. I know a number
of Princes and as patriotic Indians they will work
for the general advancement of India to a higher politi-
cal status. Their safety and survival are bound up with
the rapid adjustment to changing political conditions in
India and the world at large. Life is not all pageantry
or even love of comfort, case and wealth. The enlight-
ened rulers must regard themselves as servants of the
commonweal, and see to it that every class and every
section enjoy in just measure the fruits of their labour.

The National Congress

In these two years of provincial autonomy, Con-
gress Governments have shown that they can work out
the social, economic and industrial problems with a
general fairness and sympathy, striving wholeheartedly
towards the one goal of happier conditions of life. They
have shown their ability and genius for the positive work
of building up a new India. Unfortunately there is an
increasing feeling that the Congress leaders do not brook
opposition, are impatient of criticism and are intoxicated
with political power, I do not say that this impression
is justified, but it was one of the powerful factors that
determined the last presidential election. While
the steps that are now being taken to purge the Congress
of corruption and make it a more disciplined body are

58

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY

greatly to be welcomed, we must also recognize the
generallweakness of human beings who are in prominent
positions, their inability to preserve their humanity and
good manners. We are all liable to be broken by the
machinery of Governments. Perhaps annual changes
in a part of the personnel of the High Command and
the Working Committee so as to preserve ^continuity
of policy, prevent the development of vested interests
and give training and experience to new members, may
help to consolidate the Congress ranks and strengthen
its hold on the country

By our dissensions we are playing into the hands of
our enemies. Fanaticism is. an outcome of ignorance.
Educated classes exploit the credulity of the uneducated.
The communal differences are not religious. The very
fact that they are severer of late shows it. They are due
to scramble for posts, power and influence. Our troubles
are the growing pains of a new political order and can
be eased with forbearance and goodwill among the
leaders of both communities.

In Africa

I was in S. Africa in the Easter Vacation. I saw the
good work of the Indians there especially in Natal.
The South African Government is anxious to maintain
the political and economic supremacy of the two
million whites in a country which has also six million
natives and one million of coloured and Asiatic people.
It is an untenable position. Every step taken to restrict
the activities of the non-whites increases the bitterness

ACID TEST OF BRITISH HONESTY

59

and endangers the solidarity of the community. The
Indians were welcomed at a time and now they are not.
These segregation measures are undoubtedly humiliating.
Weak acquiescence is not what is expected of self-res-
pecting men, but I am anxious that nothing should be
done to foster racial discord by the Indian people.
They musj oppose these measures but in no spirit of
violence. The attitude of the South African Govern-
ment is supported by the British policy in Kenya, As
for the non-European front, vvc must recognize that the
history and position of Indians are different from those
of the natives. While they can unite in opposition and
work together wherever possible, there is no need to
have one common front for ail political and economic
purposes.

SELF-GOVERNMENT IS THE RIGHT
THING FOR INDIA*

Plea to Britain

The Working Committee of the Congress will
soon review the question of India’s part in the war.
Those of us who believe that war as such is an evil, and
that it is of no use to employ violence to put down
violence, will not have much trouble of mind. A large
majority of us still think that we are not living in a per-
fect world but only in an improving world.

Great Britain has entered this war not in defence of
possessions, but in defence of principles. She has the
conscience of the world on her side in attempting to
resist Nazi tyranny and the rule of force. T hinking men
in India are deeply in sympathy with the Polish cause
and the British attitude in the matter. Britain will make
a tremendous appeal to political India if the substance
of self-government is immediately granted in the Centre.

By temperament, Mr. Gandhi is a man of peace,
and he will not be anxious to press for an advantage at
a time when Britain is faced by serious troubles. But
his chief difficulty will be to satisfy the members of
the Working Committee and other leaders so long as
effective responsibility in the Centre is not envisaged in
the present Government of India Act. There ought
not to be any haggling or bargaining in this matter.
But wise statesmen like the present Viceroy should size
up the state of feeling in the country and do the right
thing, not because it is a state of war but because self-
government for India is the right thing.

• A statement issued to the Press on the Declaration of War-
Madras, September 5, 1939.

60

FEDERATION OF FREE NATIONS*

The resolution of the Working Committee reflects
the hopes and fears of the Indian people. It unequi-
vocally declares India’s hostility to Nazi tyranny and
aggression* its preparedness to undergo sacrifices for
resisting it and making the world safe for peace and
freedom. The Indian leaders wish to know whether this
war is fought for maintaining the present position of
India or for improving it so as to bring it into conformity
with the professed ideals of democracy and freedom.

It is essential to assure India about the aims and
objectives of the war. There are few in India who wdsh
to harass Britain in the present crisis. A time of peril
is not the time for bargaining or negotiations by India,
but it is certainly the time for Britain to impress on the
Indian people her sincerity and earnestness about free-
dom and independence of small and backward nations.
Since a long war is anticipated, a united and contented
India will be a moral and material asset to Britain.
India’s sympathy for Britain can l)e transformed into
active and enthusiastic support by liberal statesmanship.

Evolving a New Order

While believers in humanity are greatly disturbed by
the war and deplore the appalling human sorrow and
suffering which it is causing to millions of our race,

* A statement issued to the Press on the Congress Working
Committee's attitude towards War— Calcutta, September 16, 1939.

61

62

FEDERATION OF FREE NATIONS

all this sacrifice and suffering will go in vain if we
do not steadfastly stand up for constructive peace and
freedom. All nations of the world are to-day entangled
in an anarchical world order with their ideals of national
sovereignty and economic self-sufficiency and if we do
not reorganise the framework of the political order,
these periodic human holocausts cannot be avokied.

We are living in a changed world. We can go round
it in a week’s time and produce enough to feed all. The
world of independent sovereign nations with mystic
significance is in dissolution and will soon be a past
chapter in man’s history. The present war may well be
the birth pangs of the new order. The League of
Nations, that great experiment of political mankind to
civilise itself, failed because its controllers had not the
courage to transcend the old order. If nations opposed
to Nazism and violence are united by a common purpose,
which goes beyond the present danger and work for a
new order, India will be heart and soul with them. The
first great step towards this consummation will be the
immediate transformation of the British Empire into
a Federation of Free Nations.

OPPORTUNISM IS NOT STATESMANSHIP*

It is most unfortunate that the Congress Ministries
are obliged to resign and withdraw their cooperation
in regard to the conduct of the war. This result was
only to be* expected after the Congress demand for a
specific declaration of the war aims of Britain in regard
to India and the unimaginative response to it by the
Viceroy, the Secretary of State and Sir Samuel Hoare.
The Congress demand was a natural one in view of post-
war developments in Europe and India. The great
struggle of 25 years ago, we called, the war to end war.
The Allies overthrew the Hohenzollern domination, set
up a League of Nations and Germany became a demo-
cratic country. But all our hopes proved illusive mainly
because the powers that controlled the League were more
anxious to preserve the static pattern of the political
order than to respond to the dynamic rhythm of history.

When the present war broke out the public men of
India from Gandhiji downwards expressed their sym-
pathy with the Poles and their support of Britain’s atti-
tude to resist the determination of irresponsible dictators
to oppress and plunder neighbours who are too weak to
resist them. India’s future was felt to be bound up
with the victory of Britain and democracy. In the world
today, small and weak nations have no chance of survival
unless they associate themselves with some larger poli-

• A statement issued to the press on the resignation of the Con-
gress Ministries— Madras, 27th October 1939,

63

64

OPPORTUNISM IS NOT STATESMANSHIP

tical formations. The Russo-Chinese bloc, the middle
European and the Anglo-Atlantic are the tkree principal
groups.

Give up Policy of Drift

India has the deepest sympathy by temperament
and her recent historical past with the federal demo-
cratic union rather than with Sovietism or Caesarism.
Only she is anxious that the British Empire must make
itself true to its own great principles by correcting
imperial injustices. Britain is not true to her avowed
purpose so long as there are rigid frozen blocks
obstructing the flowing stream and the critics will be
careful to point out that the liberty-loving nations of
Britain and France have the largest imperial posses-
sions. Britain must give up the policy of drift which
led to the loss of American Colonies and the neutrality
of Ireland today. Opportunism is not statesmanship.

Nations like individuals wield lasting influence on
human affairs by their devotion to an idea greater than
their own self-interest, by the pursuit of a purpose larger
than their own immediate advantage. It will be wiser
to convince the world by your superiority in practice
than by proclamations of your ideals.

Gandhiji and his fellow-workers agree that a time of
crisis is not best suited for working constitutional pro-
blems. All that they ask for is a clear formulation of
Britain's intentions in regard to India and implementing
of them so far as it is practicable immediately, and set-
ting up of a Constituent Assembly representative of all
interests and groups including the British to draw up

OPPORTUNISM IS NOT STATESMANSHIP

65

a constitution for India. Such an answer would have
united India and bound her to Britain in this grave crisis.
Unfortunately British statesmen are doing less than their
duty in exaggerating the difficulties of the minorities
and in putting the Congress into opposition.

Congress Governments’ Record

WheTi Congress Governments were set up in eight
provinces, there was a change from the revolutionary to
the reformist attitude. They co-operated with British
officials and the old bitterness diminished. They carried
out with a good deal of success a programme which aimed
at a higher standard of social justice, elimination of class
conflicts and a fostering of the unity of national purpose.
There can be no denying that the Congress represents
the bulk of advanced political opinion in India as is
evident from the last elections and the subsequent by-
elections. It is doing everything in its power to allay
the apprehensions of the minorities and safeguard
their legitimate interests. 1 have no doubt that an
impartial tribunal will repudiate the charges of oppres-
sions of minorities alleged against the Congress Gov-
ernments. To put the Congress in opposition at a time
like this and to antagonise public opinion will be the
surest way of strengthening its hold on the country
and weakening the moral case of Britain at the bar of
history. While responding to the reasonable demands
of the Congress under the leadership of Gandhiji may
be attended with certain risks, not responding to them
will be attended with greater risks.

E. P. W. 5

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL*

We are meeting at a time of great urgency for dis-
cussing a problem of the utmost importance. History
is being re-made and the world will not be the same if
the war continued for another year or two. cWhat we
will make of our country, what will be our contribution
to the new order will depend on the aims and contents
of our educational planning.

What is the national scheme for education ? If it
means a scheme for the entire nation in all its stages-
primary, secondary and university, adult education,
women^s education, it is not a matter for controversy.
Every progressive country of the world makes provisions
for such a plan. The poverty and the backwardness of our
country and the incidence of political subjection are
responsible for the widespread illiteracy of our popula-
tion, and the limitation of our higher and technological
education. With the slow transfer of responsibility to
the leaders of the people the question of education is
assuming more importance, and its rapid spread cannot
be checked.

We have met here to confer, deliberate and frame
proposals for the consideration of those in power and
authority. But no educational system can do its duty
either to society or its pupils if it has not a clear percep-

• Presidential Address at the All-India Education Conference,
Lucknow, 27th December 1939.

66

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL

67

tion of what it is aiming at, what it is setting out to teach,
what things it considers its citizens ought to know ; other-
wise what we teach will be both pointless and wasteful.

There is nothing national witli regard to education.
The different countries are provinces of a common re-
public of culture. There is no such thing as proletarian
mathemat’e^s or Nazi chemistry or Jewish physics. Culture
is international, science is cosmopolitan in its essence
and reality ; its range and area are universal and not
partisan or national. A piece of scientific research may
include contributions from workers in Japan, America
and Germany.

Above all Politics

If we leave aside the quasi-intellectuals who are
under servitude to political propaganda, we will find that
the authentic writer, artist and scientific worker arc the
lords of mankind, the aristocrats of the human community
who work under no man’s direction, who have nothing
above them under heaven, who are subject only to inner
necessity to do the utmost that is in them.

In education we are above all politics. I’he funda-
mental principles of human development are e\ery where
the same. If in any particular country or population we
have a large number of mental defectives or seemingly
unteachable people, it does not mean a fundamental
or local difference in the human mind ; it only means
that stupidity has been in power and schools are feeble
and futile.

And yet it is possible for us to impart through
education a definite bias. The Chinese, the Hindus, the

68

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL

ancient Spartans, the medieval Scholastics, the Catholics
have used education for developing a particular type of
human individual. The Na;!^ris, the Fascists, the Bolsheviks
and the British aim at producing pupils who will fit
into particular social schemes. By artificial methods
w^e turn them into strong nationals. What is the result ?
The melancholy spectacle of the world to-day with its
dementia of national hatreds and the cynical savagery
with which nation is turned against nation and millions
of young men are ready to kill and get killed.

When God makes a prophet, it is said, He does not
unmake the man. So wdien we are told that we are
English or German, Hindus or Moslems, we do not cease
to be human beings. Nationalism, w^hatever may have
been its justification in times gone by, is to-day a perni-
cious creed. The development of rapid means of com-
munications, of telephone and wireless, the motor car and
the aeroplane and the changes effected by the industrial
revolution require us to look upon the world as a single
unit and make a real community of men possible.

The tragedies of the world are due to the persistence
of the old habits of living in a new world where they
have no meaning. We are told that the Allies are fighting
Hitler, as they fought the Kaiser 20 years ago. As the
suffering and sacrifice of the last generation did not
bring about a saner world the defeat of Hitler to-day is
not likely to serve humanity better. The hopes of the
present generation are likely to be betrayed again if our
vision is limited to defeating the enemy. What w^e have
to fight is not Hitler but a sick, acquisitive society with

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL

69

its balance of power and unco-ordinated, economic enter-
prise and unjust social order, where the pride and
the prosperity of a few are built upon the shame and
subjection of the many, an unjust international order
which acquiesces in the degradation of many nations.

Hitler and Stalin are the symptoms of the frustration
of individuals in societies and of nations in the world.
It is not by treating the spots of the skin that the fevered
patient can be cured. If there is not a drastic change
in our ways of thought and practice our race may die
not of a natural catastrophe or disease, but of the disease
of nationalism. Change or perish is the law of life to
all her children.

Ills of Nationalism

Are we then to educate our children on this basis
of nationalism when we know that history and human
psychology tell us that nationalism means that once in
every generation the cream of our manhood must be
tormented, killed or destroyed morally and mentally ?

I am not saying that there is no place for nationalism.
Till the present age the world was a large place, and
its people lived in isolated corners. Lack of trade routes
and means of transport and primitive economic develop-
ment help to foster an attitude of hostility to strangers.
In such a world of physical barriers, nationalism was
a natural necessity and provided scope for the political,
social and imaginative life of the people.

India has its geography relating to the land which
she occupied and a history dealing with traditions by

10

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL

which she lives. There are certain things without which
we cannot live, and certain values without which we
do not care to live. These values determine the life of
the countiy more than heat and cold, more than rivers
and mountains. India symbolizes a spirit, a character,
a temperament, a destiny. She is not a racial identity
or a religious unity, but is that attitude of m!nd which
declares the reality of the unseen, and the call ot the
spirit. This spiritual pattern has affected all those who
have made India their home.

Individual Freedom

According to this ideal the aim of education is the
freedom of the human individual, the freedom to thjnk
and to adore, to dream and meditate. Life manifests
itself in the individual. He is the lamp of the spirit on
earth ; he loves and suffers, knows sorrows and joys ;
he forgives and is forgiven ; he enjoys the thrills of his
victories and suffers the anguish of his failures. In a
civilised society the individual must be able to practise
his natural virtues of body, mind and spirit.

To serve and protect human creativeness is the end
of all education. We are all in different ways trying to
earn a livelihood by serving society through woodwork
and carpentry or higher mathematics and aeronautics. Our
education has been more or less academic, and we are
trying to remould it in a more practical way. A wide-
spread basic education requires teachers in arts and
crafts and leaders of science and industry, which only
a university can provide.

CULTURE NOT NATIONAL

71

The great function of our educational institutions is
to develop and increase the sense of mutual understanding
and confidence. Much more than all these is the freedom
of the spirit of man. The story of mankind, the drama
of his progress from chaos, disorder and barbarism to
order, peace and humanity is a most thrilling one. The
life of nfan with its endless varieties of form and spirit,
all the different w'ays in which human nature seems to
express itself, its ambitions and adventures, its failures
and opportunities through all of which the unconquerable
spirit of man, hoping, failing, striving, but generation
after generation gaining ground, never giving up the
forward struggle is a witness to the creative spirit of man.

It is at the heart of history. Let us hold fast to the
anchor of spirit however much the winds may change
and the tides ebb and flow.

A CALL TO BRITAIN*

Lord Zetland’s statement, though more accommodat-
ing than previous ones, is not likely to satisfy Congress
leaders.

To postpone the attainment of Dominion Status to
an undated future is not helpful. That is what Sir Hugh
O ’Nell’s statement indicates : ‘ How short or how long
a time it will be before India can attain the goal of
Indian self-government, it is impossible to predict wdth
certainty.’ To argue that India demands complete
severance from all association with the rest of the Empire
and banishment of the Crown from any place in the
Indian constitution is to dogmatise on the very premises
of the debate. Gandhiji admits that a Constituent As-
sembly may vote for Dominion Status or something less
even. When the Congress declares that India shall not
be a unit within the orbit of British Imperialism, it
means that full and free extension of democratic rights
to India wdll change the very character of the Empire.
The Congress’ objection is to imperialist Britain and not
to a democratic British commonw'ealth.

Lord Zetland makes constitutional advance contingent
on unity between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhiji
believes that the Constituent Assembly will have failed
in its purpose if it does not reconcile communal and

* A statement on the India debate in Parliament, Calcutta,
19th April 1940.

72

A CALL TO BRITAIN

73

religious oppositions. He makes out that any constitu-
tion must protect the interests of minorities and satisfy
their legitimate aspirations. It will be a failure of Britain's
task in India if the unity of the country is disrupted
in any way. It is the common objective of the Congress
and the British Government that there should be a free
and united India. This is neither the time near the
occasion to find out causes for increasing communal
tension. Gandhiji repeatedly declares that Swaraj with-
out Hindu-MusHm unity is a myth. Surely then, the
representatives of India must be given an opportunity
to settle this problem.

Right of Self-determination

Lord Zetland admits that Indians should play a vital
part in shaping the constitution under which they would
live but he feels that the British cannot dissociate them-
selves from shaping it on account of historical facts. He
makes it clear that a constitution is not to be imposed on
India but settled by negotiation. The Congress demand
to-day is for full self-determination which is undoubtedly
the consequence of the British declaration of self-govern-
ment for India. This self-determination is different in
principle from mere consultation with the representatives
of the different groups and interests. British difficulty
in accepting in toto the principles of self-determination is
with regard to subjects like Defence and the Princes.

I hope Britain will not consider it to be unjust to give
self-determination to the Indian people in regard to all
subjects of domestic concern and agree to joint deter-
mination by British and Indian leaders on matters like

74

A CALL TO BRITAIN

Defence, Foreign Affairs and Princes. There might be
temporary reservations regarding them as in the agree-
ments which Britain entered into with the Irish Free
State in 1921 and with Egypt in 1922 and these may be
subject to periodic revision. Such a solution of com-
plete self-determination in regard to internal matters
and joint determination for a period in regard vo external
matters will help to appease political sections in India,
raise Britain’s moral prestige in the opinion of the
neutral world. If the present deadlock continues and
if civil disobedience is started, I shudder to think of the
consequences for India, Britain and the world at large.
Ways and means how a representative assembly should
be convened may be left to a small executive consisting
of one representative from each province elected by the
legislatures and four representatives representing all
Indian States.

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR*

Permit me to thank the authorities of the University,
most cordially for their kindness in asking me to address
this Convocation of the University of Patna. Benares
and Patna have been in close cultural contact for many
centuries, and I am happy to say that we are maintaining
it even now. Your distinguished Vice-Chancellor is a
member of our Court and Council, and we have in the
colleges of the Benares Hindu University as many as
six hundred students from the province of Behar. It is
my fervent wish that the feelings of good neighbourliness
between Behar and Benares may be fostered in the years
to come.

Patna and its Associations

Though the University of Patna is rather young, your
city looks down on many centuries, and has listened to
great teachers of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina faiths, and
in more recent times, to Muslim and Christian divines.
Your province, as its name implies, was full of the
vihdrasy the monasteries, of the Buddhist and the Jaina
monks. The great emperor A4oka had his capital in your
city, and from here announced to distant lands his
message of dhartna, or a life of discipline and ahimsd, or
mercy, to all creation. At a time when the world is
overrun by mad despots, when the natural aggressiveness

• An address to the Convocation of the University of Patna
on 29th Nov. 1940.

75

76

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAH

of man, instead of receiving check, is finding increased
scope, it is good to be reminded of the ideals of the
Buddha — maitrl and kariind : love and mercy.

Your University may be said to inherit a great tradi-
tion of human values, a tradition which has been
supported by seers of mankind wdth a singular unanimity.
The sages of the Upanisads, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates,
Jesus and Mohammad, though they belonged to different
races and climates, did not speak in diverse tongues.
They w^ere agreed that what is most desirable for man
is not “ the riches of Croesus, or the honours of Caesar,
or the power of Nero . A civilised life is not to be
equated with physical strength or material prosperity,
political power or commercial success. The easy and
pleasant life made possible by science is not the essence
of civilisation. We may enjoy all the benefits of science,
material w’ealth and comforts, our trains may start
punctually, and we may keep our appointments to the
minute, and yet we may be barbarous. Civilisation is a
living spirit and not a mechanical apparatus. Centuries
before the Christian era, in this city and its neighbour-
hood dwelt people who lived chiefly on nuts and vege-
tables, whose clothes were plain and simple, whose
amusements few and inexpensive, and whose methods
of transport slow and rudimentary ; and yet we cannot
deny to them the quality of civilisation, for their inner
life w^as highly developed. Among them w^ere saints
whose names we still honour, poets w^hose works we still
cherish, philosophers whose thoughts we still study,
men who have raised us to a moral eminence, and who

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

77

are now part of that immortal heritage which knows not
age or weariness or defeat. Civilisation consists in the
exercise of all those powers and faculties which are
over and above our mere existence as animal beings. It
is the enjoyment of the rarest of man’s gilts, the dis-
interested life, the life of the spirit.

It is not possible for us to cultivate the inner life
unless we are raised above physical wants. 'Fhe im-
portance of this ixisic principle is understood by those
who are working for the better distribution of wealth, and
the increasing socialisation of the State. "I’he new
economic policies and political arrangements attempt
to remove the hindrances to good life but cannot by
themselves make it prevail. It is in educational institu-
tions that the youth of the country must be trained to the
appreciation of the good life, with its fine and delicate
perceptions and desire for the things of the spirit.

False Ideals of Education

But if the world has fallen into wildness, if young
men made for joy and happiness, shaped for love, mercy
and kindness, are raining hell from the sky on non-
combatant populations, innocent women and sleeping
children, if they are maiming and mangling, drowning
and burning their fellow creatures who happen to be
their enemies, the outrages on youth perpetrated in the
name of education are largely responsible for this condi-
tion. There are many who assume that the child’s mind
is like wax on which we could stamp any pattern of our
devising. Even Plato bases his theory of education on this

78

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

assumption, and requires us to soak the young mind
with sights and sounds which may sink into the subsoil of
its mental life and there remain fixed for ever. He wants
young children to look on at a battle so that they might
get used to warfare. War was the national industry of
Sparta, and so its educationists demanded the utter sub-
ordination of the individual to the State in the ^interests
of military efficiency. The Christian churches also
trained the youth under their control by giving them
their own ideas of duty and patriotism, and often they
succeeded in throw'ing a cloak of religion on the passions
and prejudices of men. Many of the educational systems
of the European Continent are fixing the youth in
attitudes of hatred, violence, bloodlust and uncharitable-
ness to all who are not of their race or political creed.
Instead of protecting human nature from vice and error,
instead of teaching the youth the mutual dependence of
mankind and the need for love and compassion, we spoil
human nature and seduce it from its natural love for
humanity and virtue. The youth of the world are thus
deprived of the heritage of decent living and simple
happiness. I’hey do not get a chance to think their own
thoughts or have their own dreams.

The Indian Ideal of Education

There is something to be said for the ancient Indian
ideal of education which subordinates commercial and
military values to the human ones. Its aim is brahma^
carya, initiation into a disciplined life of spirit, the
development of the chastity of mind and body. In every

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

79

individual there is a spark of sacred fire, a spark which
the passions may defile but cannot put out. It inclines
us to the love of the highest virtue. The purpose of
education is to help the free growth of the soul. When
the young mind is brought into contact with the noblest
classics of art and literature, it absorbs their mellow
lights, theij sacred enthusiasms, their austere patterns.
Buddha’s ripeness of spirit, Saiiikara’s magnificence of
mind, are a corrective to our youthful immodesty. They
reveal to us not only the littleness and transience of
things but the exalted dignity of human nature when
seen in the perspective of the eternal. The world is a
living, breathing one. Time bears the image of eternity^
and all mankind is hewn from the same rock.

The Present Crisis

This spiritual humanism is what we most need
today. Great changes in manners and modes of thought
have occurred. Science and machinery have wrested
from Nature a full provision for liuman life, and with
proper organisation there would no longer be any need
for long hours of hard toil or bitter struggle for bread,
yet withal there is much fear for the future. It seems
too tragic that in a world which is there for us to enjoy,
and , which might be made full of happiness for every
one, we treat human life with contempt and squander
it as recklessly as we throw away material treasure. We
have all the power of creation, all the capacity for
happiness, all the will for service, natural, intellectual
and ethical riches in abundance at our disposal, and of
this noble inheritance we have made a fearful thing.

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EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

The Deeper Issues of the War

What is the root-cause of it all ? Why are wars recur-
rent phenomena in human history ? Why do we have the
present holocaust of youth, which threatens to engulf the
whole world ? Why is it that after centuries of enlighten-
ment we are unable to settle our quarrels in a peaceful
manner ? Why are we fighting ? When we try to analyse
the causes of the war, we may limit our attention to the
immediate causes, or the remote causes or the deeper
ones. If we say that Hitler's unprovoked attack on Poland
is the cause of the war, w'e will not be quite accurate.
Even as late as 1931 the Government of Britain declined
to support the protest of the Government of the United
States against Japan’s wanton invasion of China.
Since then we have had unprovoked attacks on Ethiopia,
Austria, Spain, and Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and
Albania. If we go back a little, and look for the causes
in the Versailles Treaty, the failure of the League of
Nations, and the Disarmament Conference; we do not
get to the bottom of it all. If the Versailles Treaty was
unjust, it was a treaty imposed by the victors on the van-
quished. If the League and the Disarmament Conference
failed, it is because the spirit necessary for their success
was lacking. The root-causes of the war lie in the un-
democratic structure of our society, in a kind of tribal
patriotism and a passion for power by which all nations
are possessed. Pericles in his funeral oration makes out
that Athens is the school of Hellas, and called upon the
brave Athenians to die for winning the leadership of
Hellas which he refused to share wdth Sparta. “We have
compelled” he says, “every sea and every land to admit

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

81

our prowess, and everywhere we have planted memorials
of harm to our enemies, of good to our friends. For
such a city these men have nobly fought, and they have
given their lives to prove their faith in the inviolableness
of their city ; let every one of you left alive be willing to
suffer as much for Athens.*' He goes on : “These men
held the chastisement of the enemy more dear, and pre-
ferred the glorious risk of avenging themselves upon him.
And w'hen the hour of battle was at hand, thinking it a
finer thing to defend themselves and die than to yield
and live, they fled from the word ‘ dishonour, * but held
fast to the noble deed. These men behaved as befits the
city. You will be wiser to contemplate day by day the
might of your city and become her passionate lovers,
letting her grandeur and her glory inspire you to reflect
that it was all gained by brave men who knew their duty,
by men who, when they failed in any enterprise, did not
bereave the city of their virtue, but gave freely the fairest
offering within their means, aye, their very bodies to the
commonw'eal, and thus won for themselves unfading
praise and a most famous tomb— not that in which lie
their bones, but that in which their glory lives in eternal
remembrance to be celebrated by every opportunity of
word or deed. Of famous men the wdiole world is the
tomb. Do you now emulate these men, and counting
happiness as liberty, as courage, do not worry your-
selves about the danger of war."

Do we not hear the echo of these ringing words in
the British Premier’s utterances ? “ We shall never stop,
never weary, never give in, and our whole people and
Empire have vowed themselves to the task of cleansing
F. P. W. 6

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EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

iuirope from the Nazi pestilence and saving the world
from a new Dark Age ; we seek to beat the life and soul
out of Hitler and Hitlerism. That alone, that all time, and
that to the end.” In this tremendous epoch, “England’s
finestliour”, he exhorts Englishmen to accept “blood,
and toil, tears and sweat.” It seems to be the same
story, the same problem, the same fight. The nlay goes
on ; only the actors change and the scales alter. Instead
of the leadership of Hellas we have the leadership of the
world. Instead of Athens and Sparta we have the Allied
and the Axis powers, Wc arc fighting for the good old
cause of civilisation and freedom. We are fighting against
evil tilings, said the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain. It is
a conllict between the good and the evil, between the
graces of civilisation and the rawness of barbarism. But
is it all quite so simple ? Why should a great people like
the Germans with their magnificient record of achieve-
ment and influence in every sphere of intellectual life,
literature and philosophy, arts and sciences become the
blind followers of a monstrous materialism ? Again, the
forces of civilisation won times without number but we
are not better off. The evil is still there. Why should
we labour, plan and found families if the world will con-
tinue to be a jungle where nations like beasts of prey
are led by a blind instinct to destroy others on pain of
being destroyed by them ? Why should millions of men
be called upon to suffer and die just to enable one of the
powers to assume the leadership of the world ? Only the
greatest of causes, the securing of permanent peace and
a world of co-operating nations, can justify the unspeaka-
ble agony of our times. If a durable peace and a stable

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

83

world are to be built out of the wreckage of this war, we
must have a positive conception of the values for which
we stand. The fate of the human race depends on its
moral strength, and moral power consists here as else-
where in renunciation and seit-lirnitation. A civilised
society is possible only in an ordered community where
there is a rule of law before which the poor man and tlie
rich, the weak nation and the strong arc equal, which
believes that the world belongs to all. In this war, the
British appeal to the great ideals ot tiemocracy and free-
dom. Democracy means a system of government wliich
gives ultimate power to the ordinary man, wliich gives
freedom within law to believe, write or say wliat we
please, where government is carried on by free discussion,
toleration and national adjustment ot conflicting views.
The Axis powers challenge these foundations of civilised
life. To all right-thinking men, the issues of this war
are quite clear. There are some who believe that this
war is a conflict between rival imperialisms, and that there
is not much difference between the Allies and the Axis
powers. But the little difference there is, is vital and
important. In the actual world, the distinction between
good and evil is not clear-cut. We do not find there
black and white, but things imperceptibly shade from
one to the other. While the British system has not been
consistent with regard to its ideals of democracy and
justice, they would be altogether extinguished if the
Dictators won. The problem for the politician is a choice
of evils, and political wisdom consists in perceiving how
much of an evil it is necessary to tolerate lest worse evil
befall. There are many injustices in the British system

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EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

which are corrupting but that should not betray us into
blurring the distinction between unfulfilled justice and
a clean negation of justice. Every individual is obliged
to choose one rather than the other. Even for those who
suffer from the injustices of the British system, the duty
is clear. It is to defend the cause of Britain and at the
same time assist Britain to remedy the injustices which
are manifestly inconsistent with her professed ideals.
The failure to live up to these ideals is part of the cause
□f the present war.

India and Britain

The finest anti-Nazi material is in India, and it is
nothing short of a tragedy that she is still mainly un-
reconciled. If freedom of all people is the aim of this
war, as it should be, then those who were conquered in
the past must be set free. To win the war will not
mean much if it does not remove the great wrongs of the
present world. We must demonstrate even to the enemy
that we reverence the ideals of justice and freedom
which we condemn him for rejecting. British statesmen
do not seem to realise sufficiently that new forces arc
at work which require a new outlook and interpretation.
We need not doubt that the present Government contains
as high an average of ability as was ever found in a
British Cabinet. Its members, however, are fitted more
to carry on traditional administration than appreciate new
factors or initiate new policies. The Prime Minister,
who is bending all his indisputable genius and prodi-
gious energies to the supreme task of winning the war
has, inspite of his boldness and vision, become a

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

85

specialist and is studiously reticent on the Indian ques-
tion. The other members belong to an era that has
passed. The position of Britain in the world has radically
changed. The old policy of slow compromise and fine
adjustment is out of date. News strange, inconsequent
forces are at w'ork upsetting the old calculations. States-
men cast in tne old form wdth their servility to established
institutions are not adequate to the new conditions.
Those w'ho are in charge of India have the traditional
virtues of dignity, honour, efficiency and even selfless-
ness. They are most competent members of traditional
Government, but are too firmly set in the old ways
to be useful in the new w^orld. They are immensely
intelligent but highly insensitive. Otherwise it is im-
possible to understand a policy which does not counten-
ance the establishment of a popular government, which
does not trust the leaders of the people with the task
of building up the neglected defences of India, and
organising aircraft and shipbuilding industries in the
country. The sands are running out. Will British states-
men take courage and give content to the noble phrases
they utter, and weld together, in a great democratic
federation India and Britain for mutual service and the
service of the world ?

Justice and Democracy

If the new spirit has not captured the imagination of
the British people, if they persist in their old policies,
this war will be a sheer disaster to mankind. History
reveals to us how wars cannot be avoided, so long as
justice is not practised by man to man, by State to State,

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EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

unless we accept the principle that the weak have rights
against the strong. Unfortunately, however, from early
times the powerful exacted what they could and the
weak granted what they must. Thucydides reports that
when the people of Melos appealed to the Athenians,
who had them at their mercy, to spare them, the Athenians
would only say, “ Of our gods we believe— Mnd of men
we know — that by a law of their nature wherever they
can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and
we are not the first who have acted upon it, we did
but inherit it, and we shall bequeath it to all time, and
we know that you and all mankind — if you were as
strong as we are — would do as we do.’’* If that is human
nature, if success and failure are the sole measures of
right and wrong, then every excess of fraud, force, and
ruthlessness and cruelty is justified, and we cannot com-
plain if nations play the international game by the rules of
power politics. Unless we defeat this mentality we might
win the war but wc would lose the cause. In a great
book — The City of God — St. Augustine asks : “ Take

away justice, and what arc the kingdoms of the earth but
great bands of robbers ? ”

Of this war the end will be the beginning. If we
are not to drift into another disastrous display of brute
force, moral principles must inspire the peacemakers.
It will not be easy ; for as Senor de Madariago said ;

A democracy that goes to war, if beaten, loses its
liberty at the hands of its adversary; if victorious, it loses
its liberty at its own hands.” A democracy cannot wage

* Thucydides V. ( Jowett's English translation ).

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87

war and remain a democracy. It may be said that it gives
up its principle only for the duration of the war, and
returns to it when victory is won. It is not quite so
simple. It would be to take an external and superficial
view of democracy, which is a way of life and not a mere
political arrangement. We cannot organise for war and
yet give /ull liberty of speech and expression. Herd
emotions of fear and anger are bound to be produced,
and all the powerful agencies of the press, the radio,
and mass demagogy will be utilised for the ostensible
purpose of strengthening the will to victory, and these
emotions, sedulously cultivated during the war, are likely
to endure after it, and increase the difficulties of peace.
It requires a supreme effort of reason and imagination
to produce the psychological conditions for a just and
enduring peace. If the war is to be won on the battle-
fields, the peace must be defended in universities and
seats of learning, by priests, prophets and philosophers ;
we must train men's minds for a new world where the
doctrine of non-violence is not the impracticable dream
that it is now supposed to be.

Indian Universities

In the last war, a University Professor of Great
Britain, when asked what he was doing when the fight
for civilisation was on, replied : “ I am the civilisation
you are fighting for." Art and literature, science and
scholarship, and other creative products of the mind, are
the tests of civilisation. Those who share the heritage
built up by centuries of industry, of art, of generous
emotion, a heritage which knows no frontiers, possess the

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civilised mentality. Civilisation is larger than patriotism.
It is humanism. In these days of growing physical
danger, it is the function of the universities to keep the
soul alive. While our governments, central and pro-
vincial, are naturally absorbed in the immediate and
obvious problems created by the war, and are seemingly
indifferent to the less insistent but no less i3mportant
matters, I hope they will realise that it is in the centres
of thought and learning that the great ideas which move
humanity spring forth and acquire hands and feet. Our
universities must be the Indian nation thinking aloud.
Unfortunately most of our teachers are only purveyors
of information initiating large numbers into new habits
of thinking and feeling by a kind of social drill. To
redeem the universities from the charge of common-
placeness we require among their leaders a few creative
personalities, a few priests of learning and prophets
of spirit.

It is through the universities that we have to main-
tain and develop community of thought, feeling and
practice. There are to-day disturbing signs of the gradual
disintegration of our culture, which is the synthetic
outcome of the contributions of the various races, re-
ligions and communities which have made India their
home. India is not merely a geographical unity but a
psychological oneness. Whatever creeds we may profess,
almost all of us are socially and psychologically one.
Respect for parental authority, the joint family system,
arranged marriages, and castes as* trade guilds, are some
of the things found alike among the Hindus and the
Muslims, In art and architecture, music and literature.

EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

89

the interaction of the two communities is manifest.
Foreign invasions have not disturbed this pyschological
homogeneity. Modern ideas of science and criticism
are affecting the whole nation, irrespective of communi-
ties. The masses of people are un-aflfected by the
squabbles for posts and pow'er in which the aspirants for
office of the different communities engage. University
men can check the spread of the disintegrating tendencies
which thwart India’s cultural unity and political integrity.

Our anxiety for freedom is natural. In seeking for
it we must also acquire the capacity for it, the discipline
— personal and social — without which freedom is a myth.
It is in the universities that we are expected to acquire
habits of discipline, critical reflection and judgment.
I'here is so much material poured on us through the cheap
press and the radio that we must learn to discriminate be-
tween information and knowledge. We must try to look
beneath the surface of things. Unfortunately the students
are acquiring a mob mentality. A few of their leaders,
by alternate doses of coaxing and bullying, make the
large numbers accept opinions which are more extreme
than representative. Instead of thinking for themselves
they merely follow the lead of others. A vast mass of
emotional unreason has invaded the student world. They
are false to the education they have received in the free
and generous atmosphere of a university, if they believe
only in regimented opinion and blind faith in the leader.
Students must be helped to develop healtliy public
opinion, w^hich fortifies the individual against the herd.
He is truly educated who is poor in spirit, humble but
true to his convictions.

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EDUCATION, POLITICS AND WAR

Let me congratulate you on the success which has
attended your efforts. You are entering on another stage
of your career, and these are not times w^hen you can
expect soft options. Life will be full of difficulties, but
if you have profited by your training, you will find
opportunities of service and happiness. May I conclude
with a stanza of Asolandoy which was published on the
day of Browning’s death, for it sets forth the ideal suited
to our times ?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward.
Never doubted ciouda would break.

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to w’akc,

Farewell.

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM"

It is a relief in these troubled times for representa-
tives of ditferent nations and cultures to meet in the
calm and friendly atmosphere of a conference to discuss
the foundations of freedom and a free community. The
work of this conference is perhaps difficult to appreciate
and its concrete results may not be very ol)vious, though
there is nothing surprising in this, for movements of
ideas are generally slow and not striking at first sight.

I

No one can deny that we are living in critical times.
We see the grave dangers that surround mankind inspite
of the great advance that civilisation has made. The
discoveries of applied science, the cinema and the wire-
less, the inventions of the turbine, the internal combus-
tion engine and the aerofoil which helped us to realise
the dream of ages, the conquest of the air, have brought
about changes which are almost bewildering. Even in
regard to human daring and physical endurance, there
has not been any falling off. We see every year fresh
records established in games and sport, in automobile
races and aerial lights. It is also true that young men
today are filled with public spirit and social purpose.
When we turn to the bulk of the human population there
is considerable advance in education and above all in the

• Based on a stenographic report of a speech at the World
Education Conference, Cheltenham, 1937.

91

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EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

desire for it. There is wide knowledge, much intelligent
interest and abundant goodwill. And yet the collapse
of civilisation has become, to an increasing number of
thoughtful men, more and more of a probable event.
There is a sense of failure, a sense of imminent peril. The
menace of war hangs over the world. The great powers
are engaged in a competition of armaments and a race
towards war. The civilised countries are concentrating
all their efforts, mobilising all their resources tor a single
end, destruction, though it is called defence. Humanity
seems to be caught in a net from which it is struggling
hard to escape but seems, after years of effort, unable to
save itself. We seem to be in the grip of some unseen
power which is driving us on to destruction, a power
which we are finding it difficult to overcome. We
mean well but do so badly. The force of Voltaire’s
witticism, that this particular planet of ours is the lunatic
asylum of the universe, strikes one more than ever today.
The insanity which prevents anything being done to
bring peace and order to the prevailing chaos seems to
be nearly universal and complete.

It is no use shaking our fists at the stars ; the fault
is in ourselves. The present situation is the material
expression of an attitude of mind. Traditional obsti-
nacies, uncontrolled ambitions of military despotisms
and the pusillanimity of the great powers reduce all the
efforts of the peace-loving to futility. Though we
have the desire for peace, a full knowledge of the
disastrous character of another war, the will for peace
with an adequate realisation of its implications is not
there. All our troubles can be traced to a twist which

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

93

education, amongst others, has given to our minds,
to the fictions and false hopes which are imposed on us.
There is a profound maladjustment, a vice in the con-
stitution of organised society, something unjust within
national States, and anarchical in their relations to one
another. Society is sick because the soul of man is
infectcd^with the germs of greed and selfishness. We
should not mistake the effect for the cause. If we de-
nounce wars, wc must set our face against the conditions
of which wars are the consequence. Competitive pride
is the root of the problem, the supreme evil. To do the
other fellow down has been with us for ages, disguised
under fine symbols, national and religious. Only when
it is removed will hope be reborn in the world and happi-
ness secured for the future generations. We want a new
method of life. Attempts to secure peace by political
arrangements at best postpone but cannot prevent the
crises. The world is not safe for peace until we bring
about a change in the heart and mind of man, until we
get a sufficient number of individuals to work for a just
and free society, until we make the world a fellowship
of free persons.

II

What is a free society ? England is said to be a free
country, where every one may express his views, at least
in the Hyde Park Corner, dine at the Ritz, or dance at
the Dorchester, send his children to Eton and Harrow or
Oxford and Cambridge, own a Rolls Royce and spend his
holidays in the South of France. Assuming that this is the
meaning of freedom, can wc say that these opportunities

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EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

are actually available for the millions of this country ?
Do its people possess equal opportunities of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness ? These arc the privilege
of the few and not the possession of the many. It is
argued that we have a free society in the sense that indivi-
duals and nations are at liberty to compete with one
anotlier and lielp themselves to the fruits of their ^compe-
titive struggle. A social order which makes every man
and every nation a woU to its fellows is not a free one.
The freedom vvhicli human beings desire is not the unreal
negative absence of restraint, but the real positive free-
dom to use to the full one^s natural endowments of phy-
sique and brains. A tree society is one where each
individual has real freedom to live as he will, short of in-
fringing on the equal freedom ot others to do the same.
The sO'Callcd freedom which now prevails means slavery
to others.

The basis of freedom is the dignity of human person-
ality. No individual is to be regarded as a mean or a
chattel. Every individual, by virtue of his humanity,
irrespective of colour or race, is an end in himself and
cannot be regarded only as a means for purposes extrane-
ous to himself. A free society is one which provides each
individual with economic security, intellectual life, and
spiritual freedom.

No man can be said to be free if his desire for food,
shelter and economic security is not satisfied. Primitive
man had to fight for life, had to struggle for food and
defend himself against animals. So long as man is called
upon to fight for bare physical necessities, physical life

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

95

Will seem to him to be all-important and liis true image
will become dimmed. Though the human being has
many functions of wliich the economic is only one, how-
ever important it may be, it will dominate the wdiole
course of life, if it is not satisfactorily fulfilled. 'I’oday
man has no need to struggle tor food, clothing and shelter.
Science an^ industry have made it possible for all man-
kind to satisfy their normal appetites without any
encroachment on their fellows. While w'C ,ire capable
of producing abundance ior all, w’C arc living in an
economic organisation w’hich induces in the large majority
of people a feeling of fear and insecurity wdiicli is the
root- cause of civil strife and national obsessions. The
present economic order is the very negation of humility
and love, and a free society should be a more Ixi lanced
and humane order providing every man and w^oman
freely with the essentials of life and thus freeing the
mind in part from other tasks. Society is always in
danger of splitting to pieces, if the few wdio have the
benefits of civilisation do not share them with the rest
and assume that there is no social problem so long as
their own interests are secured.

Man does not live by bread alone. Freedom of in-
tellect, of thought, expression and association is an
essential element ol a free life. If we are to be able to
cope with the changing conditions of life, w^e must have
full freedom to think new ideas, make experiments and
correct current errors. We may have the liberty to say
even to the highest and most exalted authority that he
may be wrong or that it is possible to hold views dif-
ferent from his. Life will become intolerable if each

%

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

man thinks alike and acts alike. Diversity is in the
constitution of things and to suppress it is to dehumanise
the world. Yet religious and political organisations
demand absolute conformity. In the interests of effec-
tive action, they make society into a heartless machine
and man an automaton. We are called upon to close
our eyes, to stifle our reason, to repeat catchjvords and
to take sides. Society becomes a vast prison w'hose
activities wound us in every fibre, where we dare not
call our souls our own. The fantastic theories of
religion and politics which compel us to come into the
groups and coerce us at the point of a revolver into a
‘higher freedom’, do violence to the very nature of man.
All that is precious in human society depends on the
development of the individual mind. Life where thought
and feeling, utterance and action are enforced is not a
man’s life. All that is organic is crushed by mechanical
thought which gives power to the most empty mind.
The tyrannies of old times w^ere at least limited in charac-
ter. They left large tracts of life for the individual’s
adventure. Modern dictatorships sit in the very citadel
of the soul and determine even the details of singing and
dancing ! All this is done in the name of the country,
and its expansion. While the need for conquest has gone
by, the instinct for conquest remains. It is an atavistic
survival from a time when the physical needs of man
could not be satisfied, without recourse to rapine and
conquest. These survivals and sadistic impulses are
organised by the dictatorships which adopt the conscription
of minds as well as of bodies and make machines of men.
The delicate balance between freedom and restraint^

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

97

between self-expression and social duty is difficult to
attain, but that is no justification for tyranny or license.
A balance of liberties, an organised harmony of individual
freedoms is the ideal. Unrestricted freedom, whether
of the individual, or of a class or of even a nation, as we
are slowly coming to recognise, is a danger for other
individuals, for other classes, for other nations and so
for the whole community. Here as elsewhere the truth
lies in the union of opposites, in a reconciling synthesis.
We should strive for a socialised individualism and a
world community of free States. A tree society is one in
which economic security is provided for all and freedom
of thought and action is permitted within the limits of a
reasonable social harmony.

Even these, economic well-being and intellectual life
and variety, are the conditions of freedom which is in
essence the freedom of the spirit We may acquire
greater power over the universe, produce greater abun-
dance of wealth, get rid of physical suffering and obtain
more leisure and yet the world will be a dull inhuman
one until we recover contact with the sources of life and
realise that unillumined knowledge is no knowledge at
all. So long as we believe that there is no reality but the
outward, man is a selfish individual and passion’s slave,
the victim of fear, greed and malice and only by force
can he be trained to accept social obligations.

The facts, however, are otherwise and do not support
the atomistic conception of society. Normally man is
not fully conscious of his own self. There is in him a
hidden being which haunts him like a ghost and is an

E. P. W. 7

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EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

essential part of his life. We feel certain powers moving
within us, we know not what, we know not why. We
are conscious of the reality of an abounding inner life,
which transcends the conscious flow. All great art arises
from the depths of the spirit and not the conscious mind ;
all great heroism is far beyond conscious rectitude. They
produce in us not a thrill of the senses, not a state of
nerves, but a sense of escape from our little selves, of
participation in universal life. In their pure forms, art
and literature, philosophy and religion are consecrated
to the service of a high impersonal spirit, tending to a
union ever more intimate with.

** Our only true, deep buried selves
Being one with which we are one with

the whole world.’’

Man is one with the whole world, we belong to each
other. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.” Heaven
or oneness with the whole world in love and fellowship
is the central fact. This natural goodness and sociability
are not completely destroyed even when our nature is
heated by passion. Tenderness is normal to human
species, if no unnatural strain is put upon it. Between
man and society there exists such a deep, mysterious,
primordial relationship, a concrete interdependence,
that a divorce between them is impossible. This natural
sympathy is countered by the unnatural selfishness of
individuals and the egotism of collectivities. False racial
habits, wrong social compulsions lestrict the universal
feeling and outlook. Only when we gain a deeper sense
of the life we have been cheated out of by burdensome

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

99

racial prejudices and national egotisms will we gain relief
from our present ineptness in living and realise that the
universe is all of a piece. The spirit in man is one with
the soul of all things. We cannot run away from this
oneness even if we go astray. For those who have gained
this vision, the supremacy of a world cornnmnwealth is
an ordinaixe of Providence.

Man is a spark of spirit, a child of God. When tic
Hindu thinkers speak of bondage as due to mdyd or tl e
Christians trace it to the Fall, they are referring to the
one fact of man’s alienation from his deeper being, from
the true source of life, to the fall from the centre to the
circumference. He suffers a tragic destiny when he is
immersed in a world of nature. lie is tempted to repu-
diate the divine source of life and feels himself a natural
being, a child of the world. Man is at once God’s poten-
tial image and his potential antithesis. As such he is free
to turn away from God for the sake of his self-affirmation.
Though capable of lifting himself to the divine status, the
individual craves for an independent assertion. 'Phis fall
from the divine, this act of separation results in a disrup-
tion of the inner unity. The nature of man becomes a
wild chaos. Yet on account of the presence and opera-
tion of the divine principle, there is in it still a potential
unity. This spiritual centre or formative principle pre-
vents the dissolution of the self, by organising its con-
tents to law and order. Complete harmony can take
place only when there is a return to unity. M?n always
has been and still remains a dual being, part’cip^t'ng in
two worlds, the higher, the divine, the fiec world and
the lower, the natural and the determined in which he is

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EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

immersed. He shares the destiny of the latter which acts
upon him and binds him so that his consciousness becomes
obscured and his higher nature forgotten. This duality,
this dependence on natural necessity and kinship with
the divine reality sets the stamp of its law upon him.
Man becomes so accustomed to this world that he finds it
difficult to break through its crust and reach that primal
state of human consciousness in which no such division
exists. The task which man has to fulfil in a deliberate
and self-conscious way is to liberate his spirit from the
depths of nature, to affirm the spiritual purity and prio-
rity of human nature and to deny its origin in a lower,
non-human environment. The ordinary life we live
conforming to convention, obeying custom, listening to
public opinion, passively accepting a code from others,
is a kind of slavery though of an epidemic character.
Automatism takes the place of authentic being. We tend
Jo forget the inscrutable and invincible preference of the
mind for the infinite. And this — worldly life acts like a
dope or an intoxication leading to a disintegration of the
unique, making us afraid to be ourselves. We are bound
by the chains of our own fears and suspicions to a routine
life. They fall like a shadow shutting us from our own
reality. We must break the old moulds of thought and
free ourselves from fear. The most difficult thing in life
is to be oneself. It alone constitutes the freedom of
man, the light and life of the world. It is the destiny of
man. The fight for it is the supreme issue. Its presence
or absence makes society open or closed, free or bound,
human or mechanical. It is basic to a free society and its
denial will sterilise the whole civilisation. No loyalty

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

101

to it can be too firm and no sacrifice too great. Bondage
is the fall into division and freedom resurrection into
unity.

Ill

The belief has been a persistent one that the State
has the right and duty to determine the kind of citizen
•t requires and direct its education so as to produce men
in a certain mould. At one time the State wanted Clerks
in Holy Orders to serve the Church and administer the
State. Science and statesmanship, business and in-
dustry became important later, and, till the other day,
progressive countries adopted these aims for their
educational systems. There are States today, which
glorify militarism and train the young for rapacious and
predatory careers. They give to nations the frenzy of
sects. To remake the disintegrating society, we want,
not merely clerics, or upper-class English gentlemen,
lK>nest businessmen, adventurous explorers or ardent
patriots with the love of battle, but humanists with
vision, courage and generosity. The end of education is
self-knowledge, in so far as the self is a calm discrimi-
nating spirit. When we know the inner man, not as a
Teuton or a Gaul, not as a soldier or a priest, not as a
member of the hungry proletariat or the class of
bourgeoise but as a man facing what is permanent in the
world, are w^e truly human. Our education should con-
firm the spontaneous aims and ambitions of the child
mind which identifies itself with the whole of humanity,
if false education does not interfere with these natural
impulses. Where are the educators today who are not

102

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

merely preachers of opinions or fitters of tools but
makers of men ?

If vve are to train the youth of a free society, we
must teach them not only one role, the obligations and
rights of individuals, but their meaning and value for life.
Kvery system of education aims at physical health and
efficiency, intellectual alertness and learning, and guid-
ance of the soul, including the education of the emotions
and imagination. What matters in any system of educa-
tion is the accent. Hitherto vve have laid stress on
learning rather than on life, on intellectual development
rather than on spiritual growth. Expansion of the surface
consciousness is not a deepening of life. By excessive
specialisation and insistence on the outer, the measurable,
the quantitative, we tend to extinguish every spark of
that light by which man is truly man. Thrown back on
himself, he is overwhelmed by fear and loneliness, and
imagines gods and spirits who torment him. Clever
adventurers exploit his credulity and ignorance for their
own ends. But the growth of the scientific outlook
makes the acceptance of crude religions impossible. The
spread of scientific positivism with its assimilation of
man to nature, and the ineffectiveness of religions which
lose themselves in dreams of the supernatural, have
combined to discredit religion and produce spiritual
despondency which under the name of acedia was ac-
counted one of the seven deadly sins during the Middle
Ages. The onesided development is responsible not
only for social hysteria but for emotional instability and
nervous disorders.

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

103

There are those who give to science the prestige
which religion has lost. Its prophets see no limits to
the progress that can lie achieved by it. In all periods
of enlightenment, it so happens that self-confident human
reason ignores the mysteries of life and belittles all
venerated institutions and beliefs. Man is equated with
a system of natural forces. We are little worms, clever
worms perhaps, parasitic, unimportant nervous clods
occupied with trifles. We seem to live to no purpose,
and we do not know where we are going, how and why.
We are creatures of a day, and the strivings which will
perish with us are of no avail. Life, as a French writer
has it, is an epileptic fit between two nothings. If the
hope of compensation hereafter is a doubtful one, we
can gain immortality this side of the grave, by adopting
and accomplishing that larger social purpose which
outlasts many generations of mortal men and dignifies
individual effort. Consecration to serious purpose gives
peace of mind. Russia is not the first country to adopt
the technique of calling upon the individual to surrender
his life to a movement and a purpose beyond himself, to
obtain inward peace. The blinds are drawn down over
the windows of heaven and men grow hard, positive and
mechanical. Poetry and religion are for old women and
it is for men to become motor-drivers and electrical
engineers. Social progress and engineering take the
place of religion. The finer spirits are oppressed by the
emptiness of life and possess a feeling of frustration,
a sense of deficiency in dignity and depth. The restless
young men whose existence has become pointless, whose
allegiance is unpledged, are taken hold of by dictators

10 +

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

who presume to give a meaning to their lives, a value
to their existence. They are the leaders of hosts.
The conviction of victory with which they imbue their
followers is built upon religious elements. “ I will tread
the path/* said Hitler the other day, “ which Providence
has set out lor me with the certainty of a somnambulist.”^
A faith in authority and a reverence for symboh grow up.
The conventional religion is a detour^ a roundabout w^ay
while mystic patriotism is the straightest and shortest
road to salvation. In this atmosphere we grow up cold
and callous, w'ith our sight spoiled and values confused.
All vacant minds tend to extreme opinion. We ignore
the true and intrinsic worth of men and are dazzled by
the outer advantages of power and position. We lose
the native sense of community and are afraid ot our
neighbours. Many vague cults have arisen today ex-
ploiting the credulity of man, as in the period after the
Napoleonic wars.

The condition of our times is similar to the India
of Buddha or the Greece of Pericles with its weakening
of traditional authority and rise of self-conscious egoism.

1. The Rich youth leader Her Baldur von Schirach, at a Hitler
youth camp in the Bavarian Alps on Sundayi replying to reproaches
that his organisation was ' godless ’ said : “ One cannot be a good

German and at the same time deny God, but an avowal of faith
in the eternal Germany is at the same time an avowal of faith in
the eternal God. For us, the service of Germany is the service
of God. If we act as true Germans, we act according to the laws
of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the Fuhxer, serves Ger-
many, and whoever serves Germany serves God.’* ( The Times,
29th July 1936 ).

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

105

If we are not to fall away into the subjectivism and
anarchy of thought and morals of the Sophists, w^e have
to attain to the spiritual individualism and freedom of
a Buddha or a Socrates. If we are to launch the world
afresh, we must set up a new ideal of spiritual life.
The scattered elements of knowledge and the detached
specialism require the subtle alchemy of spirit to trans-
form them into wisdom.

The aim of education in India has been initiation
into the higher life of spirit. The student is a w^ayfarer
in spirit {brahmachdri) the period of studentship is
life in spirit {brahmacharya). Education should be an
abiding witness to the things of the spirit. “Wisdom
is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence
flowing from the glory of the Almighty.’'* Wisdom is
not knowledge. It is practical realisation. In the
Chdndogya Upanishad Narada confesses to Sanatkumara
that though he knows all the branches of learning, he is
yet sorrowful : “I am merely a know^er of texts
( mantravid ), not a knower of self ( dtmavid ). Sorrowful
am I, Sir, do you kindly make me cross over to the other
side of sorrow.’’^

The supreme wisdom ijndna) is the result of learning
{vidyd)y reflection {chintd}^ and austerity {tapas.y Centu-
ries ago we were furnished with a formula simple and
yet far-reaching, the command to love our neighbours,
and yet very few have tried to obey it. It has remained

1. Wisdom \ll. 25.

2. VII. 1. 3-4.

3. Maitrdyani Upanishad.

106

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

a casual opinion beside the mass of selfishness. The ill-
breeding of the mind blocked the way to its realisation.

The raw materials of humanity, the youth of the
world, come into the hands of educators with innocence
and eager curiosity, with natural reverence and hope, and
a craving for fellowship always half-unconscious, and we
twist them out of shape by hammering into their heads
lies, illusions and darkness. It is these that have to be
unlearnt today if young men are to be prepared for a free
society. These have to be overcome by training. We
require a change of mind and heart. When psychologi-
sts speak of complexes, they refer to the mental and
emotional dispositions, which though conscious are not
products of conscious judgments. True hnowledge is
not information which can be conveyed from mind to
mind, but a state of personality to be created by oneself.
An intellectual opinion is not a spiritual experience.
Thoughts become our own through discipline, which re-
quires us to renounce not external things but hatred and
envy, jealousy and revenge. True wisdom is the freedom
of the intellect, the sanctity of the soul. The educator
must not do anything to interfere with the unity,
friendliness and humanity of the child-mind. Children
tell no lies, they do no wrong. Their acts express their
minds freely and spontaneously. We have lost that
unity, that virginal outlook. Those who have struggled
to overcome their passions can understand the efforts and
failures of others. The true mark of excellence is the
harmony'of thought, feeling and will. The aim of spiri-
tual education is" to make the outward and inward man
one. Only then is life at peace with itself.

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

107

Meditation and self-control are neceseary for achiev
ing this. The perfection of a human being differs from
that of an instrument or a machine. The latter is judged
by its capacity to produce certain goods which are exter-
nal to it, by its speed and efficiency in its productivity.
Yet speed has become a cult in every form of activity,
including the social and the spiritual. Yet we know that
if we run at full speed, our head will cease to think and
our heart to feel. Though today human life and civili-
sation are judged by the same standards of energy and
efficiency, and are dismissed as worthless if their wheels
are not turning, the great teachers of the world are
united in thinking that the growth of the soul is effected
in moments of leisure and meditation. In the words of
the Preacher, The wisdom of a learned man cometh
by opportunity of leisure and he that hath little business,
shall become wise.** Aristotle observes that we work in
order that we may have leisure and that the higher
good is not the joy in work but the joy in contemplation.
Jesus exalts the wisdom of Mary over that of Martha and
affirms that the attainment of the beatific vision is the
fulfilment of man’s life, and the path to it is a wise
receptivity. “ Come ye apart into a desert place and
rest a while”, not din and dissipation but quiet medita-
tion. God gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks
for nothing but attention, and it is not easy.

It is quite true that some of the ascetics of the East
and the monastics of medieval Europe abused their
leisure and justified Voltaire’s gibe on the lazy friar who
“had made a vow to God to live at our expense**. Leisure
is for the pursuit of spiritual ends, for the employment

108

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

of the mind in the search of truth, beauty and perfection,
for establishing a sensible contact with eternal values,
which lift us above ourselves and make us feel that
whatever may happen to our little selves, life is worth
living. It is through meditation that we draw ourselves
inward into the depths of our being, renew the tired
heart, inspire the fatigued mind and refresh ,the spirit.
If w^e devote 15 minutes a day to the cult of the body,
cannot we devote 15 minutes a day to the cult of the
soul ? If our education is not to remain a mere decora-
tion, a show'y exhibit with no roots, if it is to be real,
giving us steadiness in the hour of trial, courage to live
our owm life independent of the opinion of the crowd,
it has to be absorbed in these silent moments. We will
know how to live only if we learn how to rest.

Those who are enabled to get behind the intellectual
layers of consciousness to the depth of spirit will see the
relativity of all national values and narrow enthusiasms.
They will welcome the ever-widening scientific vision to
which the wmrld is daily becoming smaller and smaller.
Earth, water and air which envelop us all are devised by
nature to hold us together. If we get rid of our crazy
patriotisms, w^e can co-operate on the scientific basis for
the welfare of mankind by strengthening the social,
cultural and political links so that we will feel every-
where at home wherever there are men to strive and
suffer.

Man is made for peace and co-operation, and war-
mindedness is a mental disease, a thing of shame and
degradation; which must be banished from the earth for

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

109

“ He hath made of one blood all the races of men**. The
immense influence which religions exert, in spite of the
attacks of criticism and free thought since the days of Luc-
retius and Lucian, is due to their insistence on the social
character of man. They hold up the vision of a golden
age which inspires its adherents with hope, courage and
strength aiyi aids the development of the highest human
possibilities. Even in primitive religion, it is the socially
useful acts of life that are consecrated. Those individuals
who refuse to play the social part are condemned. The
essential acts of social life, birth, education, marriage,
are all sanctified by religious rites.

Unfortunately our traditional theologies with their
false finalities are not of much help today. True religion
takes its stand on the positive fulness of existence,
though theologies which claim to represent it are exclu-
sive and particularist. These latter which once caused men
to be tortured on the rack or burnt at the stake are today
standing in the way of the spiritual integration of the
world. They assume that the principle of neighbourly
love refers only to one’s co-religionists, and acts of
hostility are perfectly justified with regard to others.
This is not religion, but politics disguised as religion.
When it is urged that Socrates declared, “I am not a
citizen of Athens or of Greece but a citizen of the world**,
and the prophets like Jesus aud Buddha made no distinc-
tion between the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the
Barbarian, they naively tell us that the Kingdom of God
which recognises no such distinctions does not belong to
this world. Thus they misdirect their fellows and lead

110

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

them to egotism, individual and national, racial and
economic. No wonder those who believe in the reality
of spiritual life which cannot be adequately expressed in
any translation into human w^ords; and affirm the soli-
darity of the human race, are tempted to regard conven-
tional religions as opiates and the unthinking take to
them as they take to drink for relief from the» pains and
conflicts of the world. True religion affirms that the
image of God is in each man, whatever may be his race or
sect. It is founded on self-knowledge and not on
knowledge of some other self, even though that self
may be a Buddha or a Christ, on delicate sincerity and
not imitative energy. Genuine spirituality goes beyond
all religious denominations and demands a humanisation
or spiritualisation of the world in all its aspects.
Spiritual awareness and social harmony are the two sides
of a free society. The sense of human need is there
and the teacher can satisfy it by giving to the youth an
idea of the fundamental power and worth of man, his
spiritual dignity as man, a supra-national culture and
an allembracing humanity.

TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS
NOT FALSEHOOD

Is it not possible even now, when tlie great powers
are unvanq^ished and afraid of each other’s might to
cry halt and set up a Congress of nations in which all the
neutrals and belligerents take their place and frame a
structure of the world which will redress the blunders
and barbarisms for which we* have been responsible and
be fair to the generations yet unborn ?*

Youngmen, the world over, have little reason to
be complacent about the world in which they find them-
selves. It is so crooked and perv'crse. In a world rich
with natural and human resources, equipped wdth the
most advanced scientific knowledge and industrial
technique, with an abundance of goodwill and spirit of
sacrifice, men starve, women are tortured and innocent
children suffer. The materials for a widespread revolu-
tion are ready to hand, ferment of frustration, deep
resentment against the existing order, unbounded en-
thusiasm and energy to do something to improve this
sorry state. Young people whose energies are untapped,
whose loyalties unguided, whose aspirations ambiguous,
provide the opportunity for the political adventurers and
social charlatans who proclaim their caprices to be the
highest ideals of society and exploit the idealism of
youth.

* Presidential address delivered at the Inaugural Conference of
the India Youth League, Lahore, 26th February 1941.

Ill

112 TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS NOT FALSEHOOD

The sense of the vast tragedy in which we are involv-
ed must give us determination to discover its causes and
a resolve to find the remedy. We know that we live in a
changing society but we do not know what the outcome
of the change will be. This appalling war, with its
material and spiritual devastation compels us to reflect
on the ideas and ideals which the belligerents^ represent.
The general security and settled framework of the last
100 or 150 years which made thought about the founda-
tions of life and society unnecessary are crumbling down.
President Roosevelt speaking at Chicago in November,
1940, said ; “ We are facing one of the greatest choices

in history. It is the continuation of civilisation as we
know it versus the ultimate destruction of all we have
held dear — religion against godlessness ; the idea of
justice against force ; moral decency against the firing
squad ; courage to speak out, to act versus the false
lullaby of appeasement,” If civilisation as we know it,
rests on these firm foundations of religion, justice, moral
decency and courage of conviction, how is it that out
of this noble civilisation has sprung this sudden
colossal outburst of brute force and godlessness wholly
contemptuous of reason, of morals and of law ? How
does such a pure and blameless world give birth to
its direct opposite ? After all this “civilisation as we
know it ’* is as much the creation of Germany and
Italy as of Britain and America. The historic achieve-
ments of the past will include such great names as
those of Dante and Goethe, Kant and Hesel, Bach
and Beethoven.

TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS ; NOT FALSEHOOD

113

Are we to comfort ourselves with the Spenglerian
view that civilisations, however great they may be
like living organisms, have their owm inherent life-span
and are compelled to pass within a definite period, from
birth through growth and senescence to death. It is
a great infirmity of the human mind to ascribe its own
failure tc^ the operation of forces w^hich are beyond
human control. It is highly flattering to our purposeless-
ness to believe that our exertions are futile and the
decline of our civilisation is the inevitable effect of
cosmic destiny.

If religion tells us anything, it is that w^e must have
faith in the reality of the creative spark w^hich is instinct
in ourselves. If we kindle it and fan it into a flame,
the stars in their courses cannot defeat our effort to
gain the goal of our endeavours. Wars and revolutions
are not like floods and eclipses. They are the outcome
of men’s passions and their w^ays of living. The
determining forces are the dreams and ideals, the
imaginative patterns, the individual and collective myths
which steer our wills. The application of the indivi-
dualistic philosophy that, if every one struggles to get
all he can in his own way, the maximum happiness of
the whole is secured, has resulted, after the advent
of the machine technique and the development of the
power production, in a mal-distribution of wealth and
opportunity and mass unemployment. Since w’e have
not planned for the re-integration of the unemployed
into the national community by other means than the dis-
tribution of doles in democracies and organisation of war
E. P. w. 8

114 TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS; NOT FALSEHOOD

ih dictatorships, since there has not been a sufficient
development of social intelligence and morality, we are
fostering social dis-integration and world revolution.
Besides the growth of industrialism which makes for a
universal commonwealth is poured into the rigid mould

a narrow national state and when the powerful
iV^tional states aim at the economic domination of the
world, conflicts are inevitable and in our age such con-
flicts involve mechanical, chemical, naval and aerial
warfare. War is really devil’s work and cannot be
deleted from the pages of history until national isolation
and selfishness are abandoned.

Wasteful Tragedy

The conflict to-day is not between ‘ civilisation as we
know it ’ and its opposite, or between democracy and
dictatorship or between Great Britain and America on
the one side and Germany and Italy on the other. It is
between two contrasted ideas of human society, that of
supposed superior races claiming dominance by virtue
of a natural law alleged to be above the common ideas
of right and wrong and the other, that of an international
society seeking the life of peace in conformity with law
arid justice. We cannot say that any nation is free from
responsibility for this war. No nation has a right
to be self-righteous. From the time of the application
of gun powder to the art of war, the relations of the white
arid the coloured peoples, of the rich and the poor have
been unrighteous. If the perpetuation of these injustices
is all that we are fighting for, if racial discrimination
and economic inequalities are all that we have to offer

TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS; NOT FALSEHOOD 115

as a “ New World,** then this war is an utterly wasteful
tragedy.

In spite of the ambiguities of the British policy and
inconsistencies in her conduct, some of her bolder states-
men make us believe that Britain is fighting to keep open
the opportunity of making civilisation increasingly just
and againsL a system ruthlessly opposed to any such
enterprise. It is yet open to her to make clear to the
world by her deed that the issue at stake is freedom for
all individuals and nations. The objective of building
a genuine world based on the ideas of tiuth and justice
must become an organic part of the war effort.

The spirit of hate and technique of terror are on the
increase. The most powerful nations of the world are
proclaiming their purposes to fight to a finish. It will
mean, if carried out, the crumbling of all human values
and a world revolution. We know what happened in the
last war.

Hostilities were abandoned in November 1918, when
it was understood that the fourteen points of President
Wilson's address of 8th February 1918 would be the basis
of the peace. Germany who had cast down her arms, and
turned out the Kaiser, was compelled to put her signature
to the confession of her guilt, to give up whatever terri-
tories wete claimed by the Allies and their allies, promise
heaps of gold which she had not and returned home
brooding on the meanness of man and revenge. The
peace, especially its economic clauses, breathed the spirit
of conquest and the policy of the later years produced
the mood that created Hitler. Have we learnt nothing

116 TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS; NOT FALSEHOOD

from all this ? If this war continues to the bitter end,
reckless of the cost of human misery, waste and shame,
the victors, whoever they may be, are not likely to be
the pioneers of that better order for which we hope.
Is it not possible even now, when the great powers are
unvanquished and afraid of each other’s might to cry
halt and set up a Congress of nations in which all the
neutrals and belligerents take their place and frame a
structure of the world which will redress the blunders
and barbarisms for which we have been responsible and
be fair to the generations yet unborn ? Other wrongs
besides those resulting from Nazi aggression, other un-
treated questions, colonial responsibilities shall be open
for settlement at the Conference. If there are matters
on which no agreement can be reached, they shall be
referred to a Court of Enquiry formed from neutral
nations, for no one could be judged in his own case. We
can hope for peace only if we realise that all human
beings are men of like passions with ourselves, that we
have all been guilty in the past, and for the future we
are partners in the common enterprise of civilisation.
The political unification of the world is bound to come.
Need it come by the decisive victory of a single power
to the annihilation of all the rest ? Can it not be brought
about by the voluntary union of nation states ? Peace,
at the present moment, when vision is blinded and
judgment distorted, may seem utopian but “Utopias”,
said Kant, “are sweet dreams, but to strive relentlessly
towards them is the duty of the citizen and of the
statesman as well. ”

TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS ; NOT FALSEHOOD

117

Newness of Life

This newness of life must spring from men*s hearts.
We must acquire faith in the common humanity, the
faith which has so often inspired saints and prophets but
which has not captured the belief of the great mass
of mankind.

However dense, however obstinate, however de-
praved a human being may be, he is a human being
and he can never forfeit entirely his dignity as man.
The question before us is what makes for true life —
peace or war, love or hatred, persuasion or force,
worldiness or renunciation ? The burden of Indians
life, the backbone of her existence is faith in the
values of spirit, the conviction that goodness, truth
and beauty are alone permanent and a man may throw
away the pleasures of life, the possessions of earth as
alien things but he is secure so long as his soul is dressed
in its proper raiment of rightmindedness, courage, nobi-
lity and truth.

A civilisation may have its political arrangement,
economic structure, technical equipment but all these
are instruments of the spirit, which is the essence of the
civilisation, its vital principle, the nerve which feeds
and keeps it alive. If the principle perishes, if the nerve
is cut, the outer structure may remain apparently sound
and free from weakness but the life has gone out of it, its
self-renewing power has disappeared and it will decline
into decay and death. India for centuries has stood for
a spiritual outlook. I am using the word ‘spiritual’,
not religious, for religions are being used to divide us

118 TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS ; NOT FALSEHOOD

and the spiritual outlook has influenced the Turk and
the Tartar, the British and the Moghul. One spiritual
landscape dominates the Hindu, the Muslim, the Sikh
and the Christian. Life and experience are more im-
portant than dogma and revelation. We are great not
by what we believe but by what we are.

Some of our smart and unbelieving youngr^ien scoff at
these views and sap the foundations of belief. They
are attracted by the high pressure machine civilisation
and implore us by threats and intimidation or coaxing
and cajoling to put into our Indian bodies Bolshevist or
Nazi souls. If the great civilisation w^hich has stood all
these centuries, comforting man and kindling his aspira-
tion, if it should disappear, it seems to me that it would
die not by murder but by suicide. The present up-
heaval may open their eyes and make them feel that
India’s chosen path may yet lead the world to a higher
and nobler way. We cannot seek unity through discord,
fellowship through hatred of our fellows, social harmony
through class conflict. These problems cannot be solved
on the plane of desires. Not by wealth, not by progeny
but only by renunciation can man attain life eternal.
It is the duty of the creative personalities to hold forth
the vision and their followers to contrive to carry the
large masses with them. For the release of India's
awakened soul, political freedom is an absolute necessity.
All those who strive to prevent free India from coming
to birth, who oppose the drawing together of the different
communities, are disloyal to the age-old spirit of India
which welcomed even in ancient times different peoples
and allowed them absolute freedom to profess their

TRUTH ALONE CONQUERS ; NOT FALSEHOOD

119

creeds and practise their codes of conduct. The love of
one’s country is not more exceptional than love of one’s
mother. We are not asking for the independence of
India for in the post-war world no country will be in-
dependent. We are demanding equality and freedom
and are ready to co-operate with other nations as a free
and equal partner. Communal differences, untouchability
and economic inequalities are disturbing the political
unity and integrity. The luxurious lives of a few with
their easy indifference and selfish indulgence bear , a
direct relation to the penury and privation of the many.
We must aim at a social structure which assures work and
security for all able-bodied men, proper education for
the young, a better distribution of the necessities an,d
comforts of life and individual freedom for self-de-
velopment.

The leaders of the young to-day have a great op-
portunity. If they are rooted in the spirit of this ancient
land, they will work for the freedom of India and the
welfare of the world in a spirit of tolerance and truth.
They will do their best to clear away the mists of
ignQrance and prejudice and press forward to the goal
in the conviction that truth alone conquers, not falsehood.
Whatever events may befall us, the light of truth will
net go out. Even if our civilisation, as we have known it,
is shaken, it will be a secular catastrophe which will
help us to grow in wisdom and stature. Let us press
forward without fear, without hate, with faith and
reverence.

CONFESSION OF MORAL FAILURE
OF BRITAIN IN INDIA*

The war in Europe and Africa is assuming a very
serious character. There are rumours of impending
disturbances in the East, which will threaten the safety
of India. It looks as if India will be in the danger zone
in a more direct way very soon. The most urgent need
in these circumstances is a friendly understanding be-
tween Great Britain and India and complete trust of
each other. But the estrangement is getting wider and
deeper. I say it with the deepest sorrow that there is
not visible any imaginative vision or courageous states-
manship among British leaders at this critical hour.

Indians of all shades of political opinion are bitterly
opposed to totalitarian creeds. They w^ere very anxious
to identify themselves with the democratic cause at
the beginning of the war. But when India was declared
a belligerent without the consent of her people or her
leaders she felt she was only a vassal state required to
carry on the dictates of Britain. Gandhiji, the custodian
of the conscience of the country made a moral protest ;
yet in his anxiety not to embarrass Britain he adopted
satyagraha with a limited scope. He could have swept
the country and instilled into the people a spirit of
opposition to the war and non-cooperation with Britain.

* A statement on the Indian debate in the House of Commons,
Calcutta, 25th April 1944.

120

MORAL FAILURE OF BRITAIN

121

He deferred from doing so since he did not wish to ham-
per the war effort. There is abundance of good will
for Britain and anxiety to stand by her and yet by sheer
stupidity and self-will all these moral resources are
being wasted to the detriment of both Britain and India.

Communal Problem

The speecn of the Secretary of State for India seems
to desire a dialectical victory more than a real solution
of the complex Indian problem. He refers to the com-
munal problem as the greatest obstacle. No one can
deny the reality of it, but it is not necessary to assume
that all the political minded Muslims are in sympathy
with the extreme and unrepresentative official opinions
of the Muslim League. The Muslims of the North-
Western Frontier Province and Sind, the Proja Party
of Bengal, the Shiahs, the Momins, the Ahrars and the-
Jamiat-ul-Ulema, the Congress Muslims among others,
are not with Mr. Jinnah. The Premiers of the Punjab
and Bengal became members of the Muslim League after
their election.

Though nominally members of the League, their
policies in the provinces in regard to the war have little
in common with the policy of the League. Besides, it
must be most mortifying to the true Englishman to find
that his work all these decades for building up a united
India has come to naught. But he cannot escape the
responsibility for the communal cleavages. Some years
ago, Mr. Lionel Curtis wrote, regarding separate elec-
torates, that “ India will never attain to the unity of
nationhood so long as they remain. The longer they

122

MORAL FAILURE OF BRITAIN

reiuam the more difficult will it be to uproot them*, till
in the end they will be only eradicated at the cost of civil
war. To enable India to attain nationhood is the trust
laid on us and in conceding to the establishment of
communal representation have been false to that
trust.*' The honest Britisher must feel repentent for
the mischief he has caused and do his best ^o undo it
even at his late hour.

Treatment to Liberals

The way in which the proposals of the Bombay
.Conference are treated by the Secretary of State indicates
that even in this crisis, Britain is not willing to part
vyjlth power in India. A cabinet consisting of non-official
Ipdians may not have large political following. But as
Candhiji said, he would accept it as a sign of change of
heart in the British rulers. All those who voted for
the Poona resolution may be expected to support such
a government.

It is not unlikely that Gandhiji may call off his
satyagraha reserving to himself and other believers in
non-violence the right to preach against w^ars as such.
Tj'he Congress Government may get back into power in
the provinces. Men like Sir Sikander Hyat Khan and

Fazlul Huq will support such a government. At a
^ime when law and order required to be maintained,
Indian Governments in the Centre and the provinces are
urgently necessary.

• lam distressed that we do not have a Churchill at
the India Office, one who had the boldness to proclaim
^ome months ago an Anglo-French Union. Indians must

MORAL FAILURE OF BRITAIN

123

be made to feel that it is a war waged not for the per-
petuation of Indian subjection in the name of minorities
and vested interests but for leading mankind into a happy
and just order. The statement of the Secretary of State
is the confession of the moral failure of Britain in India.
It is a sad commentary on the war aims that, where
Britain ha»the power, she is unwilling to use it for the
benefit of India and the world. I appeal to the British
Prime Minister to face the Indian problem and solve it
in an honest way and in a true democratic spirit.

FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITIES

Your Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen : Let me at
the outset express to His Highness the Maharaja of Indore
our most cordial welcome to this Universit)^. By his
magnificent grant of Rs. 24,000/- per annum in perpetuity
he has increased the indebtedness of this University
to the Indore Durbar, which has already given us as
early as 1912, a sum of five lacs of rupees. I recall
with pleasure that His Highness was a member of the
Christ Church in the University of Oxford and this even-
ing we will have the pleasure of welcoming him to the
fellowship of the Benares Hindu University. My
friend Sir Tej Bahadur, who is on the platform
to-day is an honorary graduate of both Oxford and
Benares, the two universities with which I happen to be
intimately connected at the moment. Well, Oxford
represents to most of the Western scholars, the cultural
capital of the western world, and has for some centuries
attracted eminent savants from all parts of Europe.
Benares for a much longer time has attracted pilgrims
from all parts of the East. The meeting of the two
famous Universities in the person of our generous donor
is an indication of the future meeting of the East and the
West with which the hope of the future is bound
up. He has given this donation for the purpose of
developing international fellowship and understanding.
You will all agree with me when I say that at the present
moment if the world finds itself in this unfortunate

124

FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITIES

125

condition, it is due to lack of international understanding.
The world has grown physically one. In an aeroplane
you can go over it in a week’s time. It is also becoming
economically interdependent. The political fortunes of
the different nations have bearings on each other, and
fashions of thought, and modes of art are cutting across
national fr4)ntiers. In spite oi this growing physical and
intellectual unity, we are having a sharpening of national
antagonisms. Closer physical approximation, greater
spiritual disunion, these are the characteristics of the
world to-day.

And if we are to remedy these defects, we should
look to the universities. Politicians and statesmen try
to bring about external reconstruction in political re-
arrangements and economic remodellings, but they have
all proved abortive. They have turned out failures,
because the spirit that is essential to make them success-
ful is not there. The temper of mind, which alone can
make international unity a success is not to be found
among statesmen. The last war was fought for the noble
purpose of ending all wars, and for making the world safe
for democracy. After it we had world economic con-
ference, the disarmament conference and the League of
Nations. Why have they turned out such dismal failures ?
Why are we having another war on our hands to-day ?
Why have the hopes of the young men who fought in the
last war been betrayed and dashed to the ground ?

It is because the spirit of the world community, for
which the world desires and craves has not been achieved.
In a world which is growing more into a physical whole,

126

FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITIES

.we have a set of 60 and odd independent sovereign states.
That is the primary cause for international anarchy and
confusion. This war is being fought again, and we are
told that it is a war between Democracy and Dictatorship.
I should like to pause here for a moment. What do we
mean exactly by Democracy and Dictatorship ? Dictator-
ship means the exaltation of the Nation-st^^e and the
sacrifice of the individual’s soul and mind. Democracy
on the other hand means the supremacy or the primacy of
the human individual and the recognition that the state is
but a means for the protection of the human personality.
It does not mean that we are all equal either physically,
rtientally, or even morally. But we are equal in an essent-
ial sense. Every individual has a right to live in this world
and aspire to the ardour and dignity of his life. The world
has its focus in the individual. Love is experienced by
the individual. Truth is revealed to the individual.
Every individual would like to live his own life, and share
his own responsibilities. There are so many sides in which
we are one with others. But in those most intimate
personal aspects of our life we are alone. When we cross
a point, even the dearest of friends are strangers to one
another. Eadh one has his own joys and sorrows, shudders
and ecstasies. This invisible life which is not externa-
lised or objectified is the personal side of every human
being. To assist every individual to realise this^ is the
aim of the state. It is the privilege of the human indi-
vidual to be eccentric, to be un-orthodox, to be non-con-
formist. Democracy means that the state recognises the
individual, irrespective of class, race or nation. Dictator-
ship exalts the states, and democracy the individual. If

FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITIES

127

the world is to be built into a human community, this
essential principle of democracy — the right of the indivi-
dual to live his own life — requires to be recognised. The
value of the state is judged not by its material wealth or
the size of its armaments or the extent of its roads and
railways but by the measure to which it contributes to the
happiness of the human individuals who compose it.
This happiness is independent of the rise and fall of
dynasties, or the waxing and waning of states.

Thucydides contemplates the image of a world in
which Athens would have ceased to exist. Polybius
shows us the conqueror of Carthage meditating over the
burning town; ‘‘And Rome too shall meet her fateful
hour/' Kingjanaka said, when Mithila burns, “Nothing
that is mine is burnt/'

In a university, it is our duty to emphasise these
supreme values of the spirit. There is a superiority of
the individual over the merely external and the objective.
For this, freedom must be granted. If this principle is
not accepted I do not suppose that it is possible for us to
build a human community in this world. To develop the
right psychology, to impart the true vision, is the func-
tion of universities.

For achieving that object no higher way could be
devised than that which our university has now proposed
with the full approval of His Highness, that is to invite
every year an eminent scholar or savant, and to ask him
to spend about four or five months in the holy city of

128

FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITIES

Benares, and send also three of our best young men, one
in Arts, one in Science, and a third in Technology to
foreign countries for further training. These are the
steps which the University has adopted for the purpose
of implementing the noble desire of our illustrious
donor when he made this donation. The first year’s con-
tribution is earmarked for the purpose of^ building a
suitable residence for the visiting professors. We re-
quested His Highness to lay the foundation stone, but
with characteristic modesty he has excused himself. Our
venerable Rector should have done it, but for the fact that
he is unable to stand the physical strain in the early hours
of the morning. So it is my pleasure to-day to lay the
foundation stone of this “ Holkar House ” which is to be
built in this university. And my prayer is that it may be
there for a very long time to house the eminent scholars
who will visit this University and continue to remind us
of the ardent patriotism, abiding love of learning, and
essential humanism of our illustrious donor.

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION*

Let me thank most cordially the authorities of the
Agra University for their kindness in asking me to address
this Convocation. I congratulate the graduates of the
year and wish them all happiness. But I do not know
whether in the w^orld as it is, it is easy to be happy.
We are living in a period of strange moral confusion.
University men who are expected to cherish ideals of a
better life for mankind, are active in producing de-
structive and deadly weapons of war. Our libraries and
laboratories, our institutes of technical research are
utilised for the same purpose. All forces of science and
culture are used for the one terrible and tragic end.
This appalling condition of the contemporary world, this
failure of man is not the decree of fate ; it is the work
of man. It is not destiny, but dastardly crime.

As university men, we are not directly concerned
with changing the political and economic conditions which
are responsible for the w^ar but it is our duty to propagate
right ideals. If men make history, ideas make men.
What is our objective with regard to the training of
youth ? Are we to prepare them for life or for death ?
Do we send children to school, young men to colleges
to make them behave like beasts of prey ? When we look
around and see what is taking place in academic centres,
how we are imposing on suggestible youth false ideas, how
we are debasing the minds and corrupting the hearts of

• Convocation Address at Agra University, 22nd November 1941,

129

E. P. W. 9

130

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

the young, making them crazy with the lusts of
cruelty and power, do we not feel guilty of using the
noble instrument of education for ignoble ends ? What is
our purpose in university education ? Is it the Nazi
ideal of military efficiency ? Is it the Fascist ideals
of ‘ work, obey and fight ’ ? Are we to train the youth
for class struggle as the communists demand ? Will sys-
tems of education based on such ideals help us to create
a new and better order of society ? The totalitarian
states look upon human beings as aimless, drifting,
credulous creatures, who without any mind or will of
their own can be driven like cattle or moulded like clay
by those who appoint themselves as their rulers. We
are not taught to use our understanding, but to yield
like animals to our instincts and appetites. With loud
speakers and savage cries we are carried along. From
the time we are born we are brought under the influence
of set doctrines. Through years of childhood and adoles-
cence, we are taught to accept the prevailing orthodoxy.
Every book suggests it, every paper shouts it, and every
cinema gives it visible shape. We are moulded into
a uniform pattern. The quality of mind is lowered and
we are rendered incapable of sound judgment. What is
most vital and creative in us is destroyed and we forget
that we have souls. To make us soulless, to degrade
us to the level of the animal cannot be the purpose
of education.

Ancient Greece and India agree in holding that it is
the aim of education to train us to apprehend the eternal
values, to appreciate the supreme human virtues and

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

131

the simple decencies of life. We must be educated not
for cruelty and power but for love and kindness. We
must develop the freshness of feeling for nature, the
sensitiveness of soul to human need. We must foster
the freedom of the mind, the humanity of the heart, the
integrity of the individual. Even from the nurseries,
we must train human beings by unconscious influence and
conscious effort to love truth, beauty and goodness.
A famous Church Father in the Middle Ages, Bernard of
Clairvaux, in a Latin hymn, asks, “Who will achieve
universal peace ?“ and answers, “The disciplined, the
dedicated, the pure in heart and the gentle in spirit ”,
No machinery which the art of man can devise will work
unless there is behind it the proper temper of mind.
To create and maintain that temper should be the aim
of education in a civilised society. Plato had a clear
vision of the goal and method of education. 7'hough
we may not understand all that we read, by surrounding
ourselves with the work of great minds, a touch of their
greatness passes on to us winning us “ imperceptibly
from earliest childhood into resemblance, love and
harmony with the beauty of reason “They sink
deeply into the recesses of a soul and take a powerful
hold of it. He who has been duly brought up therein
wdll have the keenest eye for defects and, feeling a
most just contempt for them, will welcome what is
beautiful, and gladly receive it into his soul, and feed on it,
and grow to be noble and good ; and he will rightly reject
and hate all that is ugly, even in his childhood before he
has come to the age of reason, and when reason comes,
he will welcome her ardently, because this has been his

132

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

Upbringings*.^ There are no mechanical cures for psy-
chological maladies. If the world is suffering from sick-
ness of spirit, we have to cure it. India has her proud
heritage and is broad based on the central culture of man-
kind. We are not a rootless people deriving a fickle
inspiration from transient fashions. We have been taught
the transience of mere material wealth and the transcen-
dent importance of the spirit in man. We must vindi-
cate that spirit against the deadweight of circumstance.
Indian culture has stood for the ideal of freedom of
thought and worship, though there were periods in w^hich
allegiance to this ideal was weak and others in which
it suffered eclipse. It welcomed the Jews, the Christiansi
the Parsees and the Muslims, It not only allowed them
freedom to practise their rites and forms of belief but
provided facilities for doing so. Its essential aim has
been the recognition of universal human worth and
dignity, of unity amidst diversity, of co-operation
despite differences.

We are demanding a more equitable social order.
We can achieve it only if we plan our education
properly and strive to eliminate the sources of in-
iquities 'and injustices. Education is the means for
the reconstitution of society. If we are to prepare our-
selves for a democratic order, our education must have
in view the development of each and every individual,
as a producer, as a citizen, as a human being. He must
have opportunity to develop to the utmost his innate
ability and genius, physical, mental and spiritual.

1. Republic f.

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

133

Equality of opportunity is the basic principle of demo-
cracy and that can be realised only if we have faith in
the dignity of the human soul.

The present war is said to be a conflict between
democracy and the evil things opposed to it. It is not
however a straight struggle between democracy and
tyranny, not a clean fight between good and evil, or right
and wrong. We will be more correct if we say that it is
a conflict between some measure of truth and falsehood,
between unfulfilled law and brute force, between the
whispers of human conscience and the call of the wild
jungle. In the present circumstances the chances of
upbuilding this world are bound up with the victory of
the Allies. We are directly interested in the triumph
of order over chaos, of liberty over enslavement. India
therefore isjwholeheartedly on the side of Britain, America
and Russia in this conflict with Nazism. But if Britain
has not been able to mobilise, not the material resources
but the moral forces, it is because she is unwilling,
even in this critical hour, to apply the principles of
democracy to India. It suggests that after all this war is
not against Fascism or dictatorship but is for the defence
of the British Empire which is a conquering domination
of finance, trade and tradition. The love of liberty, which
contact with British institutions has bred in us, cannot be
torn out of our soul. Political subjection is moral
degradation, not only for countries overrun by Hitler but
also for countries which are in a dependent position like
India. In the last half of the 17th century Leibniz, who
lived his best years between two great wars, wrote : “By
shameful submission men’s minds will be progressively

134

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

intimidated and crushed, till they become at last
incapable of all feeling. Inured to ill treatment and
habituated to bear it patiently, they will end by regard-
ing it as a fatality which they can do nothing but
endure. All will go together dowm the broad high road to
slavery.’’ To ask India to fight for Britain simply because
the Nazis will be worse is not fair to Britain or to
India. Are we to stand up for Britain simply because
we must avoid the worse alternative of Nazi despotism ?
Before it is too late, I hope, Britain will establish
her good faith at the bar of history, by implementing
her many pledges and declaring that India, not at some
undated future but immediately after the war will be a
free and equal country in the commonwealth of nations.

Victory over Nazi Germany is not enough. We
must win the peace and not lose it as we did in the last
war. It will be an utter waste of much material treasure
and precious human life, if we revert back to pre-war
conditions. All the belligerents speak of a new order
but there is no agreement about its character. It must be
democratic in an essential sense. It must be a world in
which all nations, strong and weak, are free and all races,
white and coloured, have ftPD Ortunitv for self-expression
and development.

Graduates of the year, you will soon face the cares
and anxieties of life. We arc intellectually poor, in-
wardly torn, profoundly uneasy and ignorant of the
future. There are forebodings of evil. The bonds that
upite us are rudely sundered by politics. We have a
small but influential minority of leaders who depend for

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

135

their existence on Indian disunity or at any rate profit by
it and therefore feel no sort of longing for Indian free-
dom and unity. Our one purpose should he to see India
united, tranquil and gracious with a new way ol lile.
India, impoverished, and harassed, the prey of schism
and division, must be raised to a happy and prosperous
condition vvith internal unity and illumination of spirit
where youth will have opportunity and age security.
We must cut through the confusions created by the short-
sighted politicians and the timid careerists who play
upon old prejudices. We must strive for the great ideals
of economic justice, social equality and political free-
dom. For them hard work, self-control, and leffective
propaganda are essential. Our chief weapons are com-
monsense, sanity and coolness. The universities are
here to equip us with them. It does not matter if we
fail in our attempt, for the meaning of life is not in
accomplishment as in the effort to grow better. We
must dare to fail before we can hope to succeed. This
age has no parallel for the magnitude of its enterprises
for those who would be men and I do hope and pray that
you will quit yourselves like men.

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS*

I am grateful to the University authorities for asking
me to address this Convocation. Let me congratulate
the new graduates on the success they have attained and
wish them useful and happy careers in life.

Usually the convocation speaker is expected to
exhort the new graduates to conduct themselves in a
manner worthy of the education they have received at
so much expense to themselves and to the State. You will
soon be the leaders of the community. What lead would
you give to the general community in this shaken and
stricken world ? It is no use dealing with academic
absolutes when the problems uppermost in your minds
are the world war and the communal question in India.
Whichever of these we think about, we are struck by
the failure of man as a political being. We see on all
sides littleness, folly, pain and terror. The experience
of centuries has not helped us to live together in amity
and harmony. The education we receive in our univer-
sities seems to have failed of its purpose.

The intellectual content of education is exactly the
same whether we belong to Dacca or Durham, Calcutta
or Cape Town. What is different is the purpose, the
atmosphere, the ideals. It is not what we acquire but
how we behave that marks the university man. We

* An address to the Convocation of the University of Dacca,
November 19 fl.

136

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

137

have a good deal of education in the sense of advance-
ment of knowledge and awakening of intelligence but
not much education as a guide to life and the service
of man. The world is lacking in the inspiration and the
power to use the great forces of nature and mind for
noble ends. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
It is the function of universities to give us the vision,
to awaken idealism. Their purpose is to interpret life in
its permanent aspects, to give us entry into a region
higher than that in which we ordinarily move, to show us
the truth that humanity is indivisible in essence and must
become indivisible in fact.

The modern world is a unity. Every civilised nation
is part of an interdependent whole. The forces by
which social life is affected are world-wide in their
incidence. If they are to be controlled by human in-
telligence, that intelligence itself should possess a world
outlook, its range of understanding must be world-wide.
The continuance of civilisation depends on the crea-
tion of a sufficient number of men and women with minds
capable of understanding and directing the world forces.

The principal cause of the great struggle now on,
is the exaltation of the national ideal at the expense of
the human. We cannot have peace so long as nations
do not possess a sense of honesty, courtesy and chivalry.
If the war is the nemesis of nationalism gone mad, it is
because nations adopted the ideal of the absolute state.
But there is nothing in nationalism which is not con-
sonant with the truest international ideal. Internationa-
lism is not a dull, flat, soulless uniformity. Nationalism
is an essential step towards internationalism. The

138

IIINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

larger outlook does not supersede patriotism but deepens
its meaning and extends its range. India to-day asks for
national autonomy and not independence which is im-
possible in the present world which is interdependent.

To develop a united India has been the purpose of
all great Indians. Geographically she is marked out as
a single country. Even in the old days w'he^i the diffi-
culties of transport and communication in such a vast
area were immense, there were attempts at political
unification. Under the Mauryas and the Guptas, under
the Khiljis, Toghluks and Moghuls the country was
under one sovereignty. Economically the different
parts are interdependent, politically they have now and
again been brought under a single sovereignty. If a
nation is a body of men and women with their roots in
the past and shaped by long historic processes, India is
a nation. From early times, great Indian statesmen
attempted to weld together the different races, and re-
ligions into a harmony on the principle of toleration. It
has been the dream of the Mauryas and the Guptas, the
Moghuls and the Mahrattas as w^ell as the British.
Anoka’s empire included almost the whole of India,
Nepal and Kashmir. He did not strive to abolish the
variety of races and religions but insisted on toleration
and harmony. His policy was liot the outcome of re-
ligious indifference or political expediency, but was the
expression of respect for sincere faith and hatred of
bigotry.

It is sometimes argued that the faith of Islam is
hostile to the traditional policy of racial and religious
fellowship for w^hich the faiths of the Hindus and the

niNDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

139

Buddhists are lamous. But it is not so. The Quran
preaches the spirit of toleration in many of its noble
utterances. “ Say, vvc believe in God and that which
was revealed unto us, that which was revealed unto
Abraham and Ismael and Issac and Jacob and that
which Moses and Jesus received and that which the
Prophets deceived from tlieir Lord, we make no dis-
tinction between any of them. “Certainly I have
sent for every people in tlic world a prophet ( wdio
taught ) them to worsliip God and never to be carried
aw^ay by passions.”^ “To every age its own book/ ^
Again, “ Inhere hath never been a nation to whom God
hath not sent a prophet. Tlic Quran admits that it
has not dealt with all the prophets, for it says : “ We did
aforetime send Prophets and Apostles before thee ; of
them there are some whose story we have related to thee,
and some whose story wc have not “ O Prophet,
I have prescibed a particular form of worship for every
group of people which it observes. Men should not,
therefore, quarrel about these forms. According to
the authority of their sacred Scripture, the Muslims
believe that India too had her messengers sent by God.

Just as it was the state policy of the Hindus and the
Buddhists to permit different forms of religious worship
and practice, even so Babar advised his son Humayun
in his Will :

O my Son ! People of diverse religions inhabit
India ; and it is a matter of thanksgiving to God that the

1. II. 136. 2. VI. 18. 3. XIII. 38.

4. XXXV. 24. 5, XXII. 67.

140

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

King of Kings has entrusted the government of this
country to you. It therefore behoves you that :

1. You should not allow religious prejudices to
influence your mind. You should administer impartial
justice, having due regard to the susceptibilities and
religious customs of all sections of the people.

2. In particular refrain from the slaughter of cows
which will help you to obtain a hold on the hearts of the
people of India. Thus you will bind the people of the
land to yourself by ties of gratitude.

3. You should never destroy the places of worship
of any community and always be justice-loving so that
relations between the King and his subjects may remain
cordial and there may be peace and contentment in the
land.

6. Treat the different peculiarities of your subjects
as the different seasons of the year, so that the body
politic may remain free from disease.

Akbar, his grandson inherited the generous tradi-
tions of Babar and adopted a liberal policy of justice
and fairplay for all races and communities. When
Aurangzeb attempted to convert the state into a theo-
cracy, his empire broke upland the rule was transferred
to other hands.

The Hindus and the Muslims belong to the same
stock. They are distributed, though unevenly, over the
whole land. They speak the same language, Bengali in
Bengal, Gujarati in Gujerat. As a rule they have respect-
ed each other’s forms of worship and worked together to

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

141

achieve a culture, which is neither Hindu nor Muslim
but Indian. In Art and Architecture, in Music and
Painting, and even in religion the interaction of the two
faiths is manifest. The teachings of Kabir and Nanak,
Dadu, Chaitanya and Tukaram and the development of
Sufi mysticism, indicate the spirit of haimony in which
the leaders of religion worked. In lakhs of villages in
India, Hindus and Muslims enjoy the same sports and
amusements, participate in each other’s festivities and
aerve the common aims of village life. Even in political
struggles, the Hindus and the Muslims had fought in both
camps. In the great Indian Mutiny, they fought side by
side. All these centuries the followers of the two religions
have learned to live in a spirit of amity and concord.
Mr. James Forbes, writing about Broach in 1778, observes:

Whatever might have been the animosities between
the Hindus and the Mahammadans in the time of Baba
Rahman (1078 a,d.) or during subsequent periods it is
certain that now the professors of both religions have
acquired a habit of looking upon each other with an eye
of indulgence unusual in other countries between those
who maintain such opposite tenets.”' Hamilton’s
Gazetteer records (1815) “ The two religions have existed
together so long that the professors of both have acquired
a habit of looking on each other with a tolerance and
indulgence unusual in other countries.”

The historic role of the British in this country has
been to prepare India for a new nationhood. Leading
British statesmen and administrators like Munro,

1. Oriental Memoirs.

142

IIINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

Malcolm, and Idpliinstone set before themselves this
great ideal. ’ In his famous Minute on Indian Education
Macaulay wrote : “It may he that the public ol India
must expand under our system till it has outgrown our
system ; that by good government we may educate our
subjects into a capacity for better government ; that
having become instructed in European knowledge, they
may, in some future age, demand European institutions.
Whether such a day will ever come, I know not. But
never will I attempt to retard it or avert it. Whenever
it comes, it will be the proudest day in English History.”
Educated under this system Indian intellectuals learnt
to appreciate the value of political freedom and demanded
it. There are critics who contend that our system of
education'is on wrong lines. That it stands in need of
improvement in many directions is unquestioned. But
it has created a passion for freedom and unity which is
felt throughout the land, irrespective of race, religion or
community.

Strange to say we have British statesmen who attempt
to “ retard ” and “ avert ” the growth of national feeling.
Against the higher mind of Britain some of those in
power in and over this country got nervous about the
steadily growing passion for political freedom and
fostered illwill and antagonism between the communities,
as well as between British India and the Native States.
In his letter dated May, 28, 1906, Lord Minto wrote to
Lord Morley : “I have been thinking a good deal lately
of aipossible counterpoise to Congress aims. I think one
inay find a solution in the Council of Princes, or in an
elaboration of that idea Subjects for discussion and

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

143

procedure would have to be carefully thought out, but
we should get ditferent ideas from those of the Congress,
emanating from men already possessing great interest in
the good government of India. A Mohammadan

1. The Mahommadans of Eastern Bengal arc almost all des-
cended from low caste or aboriginal H»ndus who long ago embraced
Islam in hop? of social improvement or from hard necessity. T’here
^as never any cause for quarrel between the Hindus and the Mahom-
madans as such. As simple cultivators they live side by side, and
speak the same language. For the firat time in history a religious
feud was established between them by the partition of the province.
For the Hrkt time the principle was enunciated in official circulars
“divide and rule”. The hope was held out that the Partition
would invest the Mahammadans with a “unity they had not enjoyed
since the days of the old Mussulman Viceroys and kings ”,
The Mahammadans were officially favoured in every possible way.
“My favourite wife” was the somewhat coarse phrase used by Sir
Bampfilde Fuller to express his feelings. The High Court in Cal-
cutta was constrained to censure the racial bias judicially displayed
by a District Judge. The opportunity was taken by evilly dis-
posed persons with their headquarters at Dacca to scatter emissaries
through the country preaching the revival of Islam, advocating the
wildest extremes, and proclaiming to the villagers that the British
Government was on their side and w'ould exact no penalty for
violence done to Hindus, No steps were taken by the authorities to
check the dangerous propaganda. Riots followed, lives were lost,
Hindu shops were looted, and many Hindu women were carried off.
Some towns were deserted, women spent nights concealed in tanks
and general terror prevailed throughout the country-side.

“An official excuse was at once put forward that the national
boycott of foreign goods was the cause of the disturbances. But there
was no vestige of foundation for such an explanation. The ill-feeling
which had made itself manifest between the Hindus and the Maham-
madans affected only the limited area in which the emissaries of

144

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

deputation was “ engineered ’’ to use Lady Minto’s
expression, to wait on the Viceroy at Simla on the 1st of
October, 1906. The Viceroy was “ entirely in accord
with its main demand to be represented on the electorate
as a “ community “ beyond its numerical strength ’’ in
recognition of “ the political importance of your com-
munity and the service it has rendered to the Empire.
Thus was achieved “ a work of statesmanship that will
affect India and Indian history for many a long year. It
is nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions
of people from joining the ranks of the seditious
opposition.

The rivalries are unknown to the common people
and the middle classes who compete for preferment and
power and political ascendancy utilise the points of
difference. In this overpopulated country, there is a
continuous struggle to secure reservation of public

fanaticism had done their work. The judicial inquiries that were
held conclusively proved that the object of the rioting was to molest
the Hindus, and had nothing to do with any boycott. And yet Lord
Morley was put up to reply in the House of Commons The situation
in Eastern Bengal was strained owing to the bitterness existing bet-
ween Hindus and Mahammadans consequent on the attempts made
to compel Mahammadanas by violence to abstain from purchasing
foreign goods.” There could be no more grotesque instance of the
power officials have of misleading their chief.” Sir Henry Cotton:
**Jndian and Home Memories", P. 317, And again : Lord Olivier, a
former Secretary of State of India observed : “No one with any close
acquaintance with Indian affairs will be prepared to deny that, on the
whole, there is a predominant bias in British officialdom in favour of
the Muslim community, partly on the ground of closer sympathy but
more largely as a makeweight againat Hindu nationalism.”

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

145

appointments by the different communities in proportion
to their number. In this atmosphere of jealous compe-
tition, religion is used for securing jobs. The religious
community acquires an economic value and a shrewd
bureaucracy finds it convenient to carry on administra-
tion, and secure its strength by organising public life
on the priry^iple of a struggle for posts and patronage !

In the generous years of youth, the Hindu and tlic
Moslem are often the best of friends. Outside India their
patriotism is manifest. They get acquainted with the
growing spirit of nationalism. The Moslem States out-
side India have not shown any special interest in their
Indian co-religionists. Territorial nationalism has been
the dominating force in their development. The Arab
States revolted against the Ottoman hhnpire and secured
their independence in 1918, and they are divided into
four nationalities. Mustafa Kemal created a modern
State out of the ruins of a mediaeval theocracy. He
abolished the office of the Caliphate and established a
Repuplic of secular character. Nationalism is the chief
principle. Every citizen is a Turk so long as he lives
within the national frontiers, speaks the Turkish language
and makes the national ideal his own. The Egyptians
are interested in the future fortunes of Egypt as an
independent state. The Persians are a distinct nation
and have forbidden the import of propagandist religious
literature. The Afghans are building up a national state
on the same lines. The Chinese Muslims fight against
the Japanese Muslims. Sir Ronald Storrs, an intimate
friend and associate of Lawrence during the Arab revolt
and the first military Governor of Jerusalem writes;

E. P. W. 10

146

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

•‘As a factor in British policy, the doctrine of the
Caliphate — of pan-Islarn I'lieocracy — was mainly the
creation of the India office. The supposed indignation
of ** His Majesty’s sixty million loyal Indian subjects ”
who appear alternatively under the journalese disguise of
“ Moslem susceptibilities ”, delayed many reforms in

the Near and Middle East ” Those who are

acquainted with the facts of human nature and the moving
forces of the world are aware that a change of faith does
not connote a change of nationality.

When the principle of separate electorates was
embodied in the Reforms of 1909, the “ dragon’s teeth ”
of hatred were sown, to use Lord Morley’s expression.
Mr. Lionel Curtis wrote : “ The concession of this

principle when electoral institutions were inaugurated a
few years ago, is the greatest blunder ever committed by
the British Government of India. I believe, that, if this
principle is perpetuated, we shall have saddled India
with a new system of caste which will eat every year
more deeply into her life. So long as it remains, India
will never attain to the unity of nationhood. The longer
it remains, the more difficult will it be to uproot it, till
in the end, it will only be eradicated at the cost of civil
war. ’I’o enable India to attain nationhood is the trust
laid on us and in conceding to the establishment of
communal representation we have, I hold, been false to
that trust”. Instead of developing the civic conscious-
ness of the people, we are trained to think in terms of
communities and behave as partisans and not citizens.
If the Government of India Act to build up a federal
India failed, one of the chief reasons is the psychological

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

147

efl'ect of the working ol communal electorates these three
decades. The great Muslim Divine Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad who is also the President of the Congress
says, “ Those who make the proposal of alteration
are flying in the face of history, ethnology and the
tendency of modern times. When they say we are two
nations, tli^iy beg the question. The ancestors of most
of us were common and I for one do not accept the
theory of a superior or inferior race or of diflerent races.
Mankind is one race and we have to live in harmony
with one another. Providence brought us together
over tliousand years ago. We have fought, but so do
blood brothers fight. So did Englishmen and English-
men fight— as in the Wars of the Roses. But they did not
insist on living as separate nations. During the thousand
years we have reacted on one another to our mutual,
spiritual, cultural, moral and material benefit. They
want to put the hands of this clock back by centuries.
No, it is no use trying to emphasize the differences. For
that matter no two human beings are alike. Every lover
of peace must emphasize similarities. Diversities but
lend colour to essential similarities. What, therefore, I
detest is the communal approach to the national problem »
Nowhere in the world has a national problem been
approached on communal lines. In a future constitution
determined by Indian representatives, the Hindu or the
Mussalman will have to think of his position and interests
not as a Hindu or a Mussalman, but as a peasant or a
Zamindar, as a labourer or a capitalist and so on. Religious
freedom will be one of the fundamental rights under any
free constitution, but whatever that constitution, it will

148

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

be nothing worth unless it reflects equality of opportu-
nity or economic freedom for all. But why must I argue
this ? Let Mr. Jinnah get himself elected by the Muslims
and come to the Constituent Assembly and press his
demands on behalf of the Indian Muslim world.” ^

It is tempting for all of us to sacrifice the permanent
interests of the country for immediate benefit. But those
who patiently pursue the good of the country, s tting
aside immediate success and profit may seem to fail.
But even:through failure they will serve the cause of truth.

We are today in the midst of a world war and we
ardently admire those who arc fighting the menace which
threatens to engulf the whole world and throw it back.
The workers who go on with their jobs night and day in
the midst of death and destruction building aeroplanes
while bombs crash around them, forging guns and fitting
shells in the factories wliich are half burnt, the sailors
who go out in ships to find the deadly submarines, the
gallant airmen who are so bravely risking their lives and
saving their country, reveal of what precious metal the
centuries have made the British people. Their valour
and serenity under fire move the imagination of the
Indian youth, who are anxious to throw themselves into
the struggle and do their very best to defend their own
country. Even now with the Nazi hordes thrusting at the
gates of Moscow, and maturing their plans of attack of this
country through Iraq, and Iran and with the Japanese pre-
paring to strike through Indo-China at Burma and Dutch

1. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, by Mahadev Desai (1941), Pages
170-171.

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

149

East Indies, India with nearly four hundred millions of
people is menaced but is unarmed and unready to meet
the attack. The Government of the country instead of
calling' upon the youth to fight for a free India, are argu-
ing thatiOOthing can be done until the irreconcilables are
reconciled. TIis Excellency the Viceroy in a recent
broadcast*alluded in generous terms to India’s war effort:

Her young men have come forward to answer the call
for service on the sea, on the land and in the air ; her
factories, her mills, her dockyards are working night and
day to produce the munitions and equipment, the ships
and vehicles of war ; her Princes and people have poured
out their wealth in free will offerings to meet the cost ot
war.” Yet, Mr. Chancellor, the response is not nation-
wide. Magnificent as the achievements of Indian troops
and men are, what are they in comparison to what India
might have done with her millions of brave men, with her
rich resources for great industries to equip modern armies
and airforces ? We are up to our necks in this war but
many of us do not feel that it is our war though we wish
to do so. India is anxious to co-operate in the great
struggle to enlarge the bounds of human freedom. Indian
unity today is essentially a British interest. Mr. Amery
said in his recent speech at Manchester : “If India were
broken up and reverted to chaos tomorrow, Indians have
to set about trying to invent for her at any rate some
minimum of unity against dangers from outside.” And if
that is impaired, the world will hold the British responsi-
ble for they ruled the country all these decades, with an
absoluteness for which there is no parallel. They initia-
ted policies and executed them. We are told that this

150

HINDU-MUSLIM RFLATIONS

war is a clash of ideals. If it is so, if we are standing up
for the ideals of unselhsh ser\ice. against the material
one of desire for gain, let us not lose this moral ideal by
protecting what \vc have gained by means wliich we today
condemn. In this critical hour ot human history, it is
Britain’s duty to throw aside her hesitation and summon
India to licr side.

I’he problems facing us arc neither Hindu nor
Muslim, but Indian. They cannot be resohed into
religious, communal or sectarian components. India is
an indivisible unit and will have to act as such in peace
and war. We arc united both in safety and in peril.
We all face a common peril, and must participate in the
common task of winning and preserving our liberties.
We arc all faced by the .same need, a sufficiency of food,
a decent human status. Our social disabilities and our
political and economic interests are common. We must
strive to remove tliem. If w^e succeed, the bogeys that
haunt us in the present gloom wdll disappear. If we
fail, nothing else matters.

The purpose of an Indian university should be to
work'.for an India in which the Hindu and the Muslim, the
Buddhist and the Christian, the Jew^ and the Parsi can take
pride. Communal prejudice is not instinctive but it is
a cultivated attitude. The cheap press and the popular
demagogue utter loudly the slogans and appeal to our
immediate self-interest. In the confusion of inharmoni-
ous voices we fail to understand one another’s speech.
We make loud protests if the reservoirs which supply us
with water get poisoned and until the poison is removed.

HINDI --MUSLIM lU-LATU^NS

151

\ve are not content. But wlx-n the wells of tlioiight are
being continuouslv poisoncti by our ()\vn leaders lor
their private profit and ambition, we look on powerless
and silent at the corruptors of jniblic opinion. 11 wc
are to recover a proper view of life wc must clc\ate the
ideal of citizenship above the conllitt of sectional in-
terests ar^l remove through educational institutions
the obstacles to mutual understanding. In a residential
university where vve work together in the class lOom, in
the Idbrary, tlie Debating Society and the play ground,
misunderstanding and suspicion melt awav and a spirit
ot goodwdll and co-operation grow up. It the tlioughts
we have cultivated, if the liabits w^e have developed,
during our years in tlic university are to be used for
sowing seeds ol destruction then our univcisiiies may
well be scrapped. Wc may not give up hope siiujily
because the powers (d mischiel are more active. VVe
niust bear as little malice as wc can towards iliosc whoso
weakness has caused the present trouble. And wdiatevet
you do as university men you must keep aliv^c the
recognition of the sacredness ot truth and sensitivity
to human need, h ARhAVdn.L.

GANDHIJl AND MALAVIYAJI

In concluding the proceedings of the Special Silver
Jubilee Convocation of the Benares Hindu University
held on Vasant Panchami, the 21st January 1942, Professor
Radhakrishnan said

Mr. Pro-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi, Ladies and
(Jcntlemen ;

It is now my great pleasure to propose a cordial
vote of thanks to all those who have helped to make this
function such a conspicuous success. We are proud that
we have for our Chancellor and Pro- Chancellor true
friends of the Benares Hindu University and great be-
lievers in its ideals. His Highness the Maharajak>f Bikaner
is unable to be present on account of a domestic bereave-
ment, but he has sent us a heartening speech which will
be printed and circulated. As another token of his good-
will he has sent us a cheque for Rs. 25003/- on the oc-
casion of this Silver Jubilee. Our Pro-Chancellor,
Maharajadhiraj Sir Kameshwar Singh Bahadur is an ardent
friend of the University, one on whom we could rely
in our difficulties and he has increased the great debt
which this University is under to him by giving us to-day
a magnificent sum of three lakhs of rupees of which one
kkh is to be utilised for the construction of the Ayurvedic
College extension. The income from the other two lakhs
of rupees is to be utilised for the development of a
diploma course in Ayurveda. The extension is to be
called after his late beloved wife Maharanyadhirani Shri

152

GANDHIJI AND MALAVIYAJI

153

Kameshwari Priya Devi. I have already said that His
Highness the Maharaja of Morvi has given us a donation
of a lakh of rupees for the construction of a hostel. We
have received several donations from merchant benefac-
tors, but that Prince among merchants, Raja Dr. Baldev
Das Birla, has to-day granted us a sum of a lakh of rupees
for the construction of a building to house the colleges
of Oriental Learning and Theology. Besides this he
has given us a sum of Rs. 10,000/- from the revenue of
which we are to establish a lectureship in Pali attached
to the College of Oriental Learning. With such friends
among Princes and merchant princes the future of the
University is assured.

We are living to-day in a dark and uncertain world.
The spread of war from one end of the world to the
other, the increase of the weapons of destruction of an
lunprecedented scale and the rise of bitterness and hatred
beyond measure are things which make us sometimes
despair of the future of humanity. Like the machines
with which we deal, we seem to have become cold and
callous, insensitive to human feelings, to the sorrow of
human hearts, and to the tension of human minds. Often
a spirit of defeatism creeps over us making us feel that
we are powerless to overcome the forces that are sur-
rounding us, that we are caught helpless in the wheels
of the machine which is over-powering us. The world is
too much engrossed in its selfish designs to realise its
own shame, and too weak to aspire to those eternal
verities of love and truth which have helped to sustain
civilisation since time began. Men and women in
different parts of the world are meditating in their minds

154

GANDFUJI AND MALAVIYAJI

on a means of escape from this chaos and darkness and
asking themselves v^diether it is impossible to rear an
earth in the image of the spirit, a world based on sanity,
mutual understanding, love, where women would be able
to bear children without the dread that their young bones
would be strewn across the battlefields of the world. In
this mood of questioning, of diminished self-tconfidence,
they look to India whether they might not rekindle the
expiring candle of their own civilisation at the living flame
of India, and when they turn to India, it is not to the
politicians, not to the merchants, not to the industrialists
that they look, for there arc plenty of such people in their
own countries, but to the prophet of this great land,
Mahatma Gandhi. He has warned us about the tragedy
which lias afflicted us. He has pointed out to us that the
fatality we are faced with is not external to us but is
within ourselves and that we are not unequipped for the
battle of overcoming it. At a time when the world is
groping in the dark, he gives us faith ; when we are
surrounded by disillusionment, he imparts hope ; when
we are lost in resentment and misunderstanding, he
calls us back to the path of love and truth. A living
symbol of non-violence, incapable of the least un-
generous thought, with a heart so large as to encompass
the whole of humanity, he is truly a man of peace, and
therefore the most powerful adversary to the present
passion-torn, war-shattered world. He is here with us
to bless our enterprise. It is a proud day which we wdll
remember to the end of our lives that we are able to
listen to the voice of the ancient spirit of India from the
lips of one who has made it a part of his very being.

OANDIIIJI and AIALAVIYAJI

155

Somewhere Thomas Hardy says that a Dorset work-
man was presented with a bit of stone from Areopagus.
He looked at it with awe and amazement and said “ To
think that this bit of stone listened to the voice of
St. Paul.’’ Here we have not a bit of stone, but a whole
landscape. If only nature could have life and memory,
the stones ot Benares would be able to repeat the words
of Veda Vyasa, of the Rishis of the Upanishads, the
sermons of Buddha, the message of the Gita, and the
sayings of hundreds of saints and teachers who liave lived
in this neighbourhood. Is it possible for us to think
of a more suitable site for the development of tlie Hindu
University ? And is it possible for us to think of a
guide, protector and director of all our activities, nobler
than our venerable Rector, selfless, loyal, gemle but
not weak, determined but not aggressive, a spirit as
clean as the mountain air ? He has lighted a lamp here,
whose light will penetrate far into space and time and
will not be put out, by God's grace, as long as civilisation
lasts. In a world where men strive and gods decide,
no better combination of place and personality could
have been thought of. It is a matter of great rejoicing
that in his 81st year, he is with us to witness the celebra-
tion of the Silver Jubilee of his pet child. May I on
behalf of the Indian nation, its princes and people,
offer our prayerful gratitude lor his life-work and wish
him in the words ol the Vedas ‘ jIVEMA SARADAS-
SATAM ’. May he live for a hundred years.

With these two men, Malaviyaji and Gandhiji on our
dais, men touched by grace, sanctified by spirit, this city
of Benares already holy becomes holier.

156

GANDHIJI AND MALAVIYAJI

bhavadvidhah bhagavatah tirthabhutah...
tirthikurvanti tirthani.

It is true that we have a debt of nearly 20 lakhs
of rupees and our finances are not satisfactory. But the
real wealth of a university is not to be measured by the
amount of debt it has. You measure it by the extent
of the sacrificial service that has endowed it •and in that
wealth this University is very rich. I have no doubt
that with friends among all classes of the Indian Com-
munity who realise that it is a people’s institution, this
University which is our pride will not be allowed to
languish. It is an honour for any of us to assist the
University, materially and morally and help us to fulfil
the mission of India in the world at large, the mission
of leading the halting steps of humanity nearer its goal
of a kingdom of heaven on earth. May this University
live long and realise its ideals for human progress.

RELIGION: A PLEA FOR SANITY^

We live in an age of movement, of rapid movement,
not only in physical but in intellectual and spiritual
affairs also. Everywhere the old barriers are breaking
down, the oM ideas are disappearing. Religion, which
v/as hitherto regarded as the strongest of all conservative
forces, has not escaped this law of drastic change. Some
are attempting to clarify religious ideas and reform
religious practices ; others, of a revolutionary cast of
mind, are attempting to dethrone religion from its place
in human life. If the revolutionaries succeed, India will
lose her distinctive individuality ; for religion has been
the master passion of the Indian mind, the pre-supposi-
tion and basis of its culture and civilisation. TIic history
of India has for its landmarks not wars and emperors,
but saints and scriptures.

This historic life of the country is being threatened
today by two forces, dogmatic denial and dogmatic
affirmation, blank negation and blind faith. These two
which agree in their spirit and method, though they differ
in their content and conviction, have a common origin,
and are the outcome of a singular narrowness of mind or
obscurantism.

The denying spirits complain that religion has been
a force of dangerous reaction. By withdrawing itself from
the scene of mankind’s social agony, it lends support to

* A broadcast talk from Calcutta Station of the All India Radio.

157

158

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY

the existent order. Those, who burn with a passion for
social justice, find religion to be worthless at its best^ and
vicious at less than best. They ask : Is there a God ?
Does it pay to be upright? What is the meaning of life
after all ? Is tlie present distribution of power and
opportunity, where a few have a chance to live without
working, while the many have their backs broken by the
burdens they bear, is this order justified ? When the
evils ol the world cry out for redress, is it the time to
discuss the state of our souls or the pictures of the
unseen ? Religion seems to be utterly irrelevant to the
problems of the world in which we live.

There is a good deal to be said in favour of this
criticism of religion, but it is a criticism, not of religion
as such, but of its otherworldly and abstract character.
The mark of spirituality is not exile from the natural
world. The truly religious are opposed to the injustice
and iniquity of the world. They befriend not the strong
but the w^eak and the suffering, those who cannot help
themselves. Y asinin sarvdni bhfddfii atmaivdhhut

mjdfiatah.' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The condition is absolute : dtmaiva^ thyself. There
must be freedom and equality of status. Such a demand
would make for the establishment of a universal com-
munity of free persons, and require those who accept it
to overcome the artificial barriers of race and creed,
nationality and wealth. Unless a man is economically
secure, he cannot develop his individuality. If he is
starving, his personality will wdther and die. All
attempts at establishing a social democracy, a more equal

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY

159

distribution of wealth and opportunity, may be regarded
as a genuine manifestation ol the religious spirit.

I should like however to utter a warning. Man can-
not find his happiness, simply because we secure for him
a sufficiency of material goods. We all know that there
are many in^lhis world who have all the comforts and
conveniences which wealth can bring, who are yet
buttering from emptiness of soul, from nudity ol spirit.
They have done with tlic radiance and gladness of life.
They have no hopes to inspire, no aml)iti()ns to realise,
no faith to live by, no happiness to which they can look
forward. Their minds are distracted, their action is
fragmentary and futile. Suppose we succeed in our
attempt to build an earthly paradise, where we will have
good roads and water-supply, excellent sanitation, free
education for all, unlimited picturehouses and soft
drinks, golf links jor adults, lights, lifts and wireless
installations lor everyone, do you think w'c will be con-
tented and happy ? Our activities are moved, not merely
by the economic motive but also by vanity and ambition,
jealousy and ill-temper, or by a noble unselfish idealism
or by a disinterested hatred of injustice and cruelty.
Our selfishness and stupidity, our false pride and dignity
will continue to corrode and spoil the purity of our
personal relationships. We will not cease to ask, Why
do we stiffen, grow old and die ?” Man has far horizons,
invincible hopes, thoughts that wander tlirough eternity,
projects that cannot be accomplished in time. To find the
way to truth, to create a work of beauty, to understand
another human soul, he is willing to. scourge himself, to

160

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY

endure hunger and thirst, to give up his all. This pre-
ference for the values of spirit is not an eccentricity.

The recognition of this vital fact, that man lives for
a purpose larger than he sees, and is most himself when
he realises it, has been the deepest phase of Indians life.
Occasionally, perhaps, each of us has had a few moments
of impersonal joy, when we seem to tread npt on solid
earth but on uplifting air, when our being is transfused
with a presence that is unutterable, yet apprehensible,
when we have a sense of spirit, timeless and eternal,
when we touch the very limits of beatitude, where seek-
ing interest and yearning unfulfilled yield to attainment
and serenity, when time stops short and life is as still as
death, when we contact the universal reality whose
shadow is immortality and death. Yasya chdyd amrtam^
yasya mttyuh. Death and immortality, life has in it the
seeds of both, and it depends on us, on our choice, on
our effort what we make of it. Life is an opportunity
and we can use it for life eternal or dust and ashes.
Man’s peculiar position in the world is that he stands
between the two poles of Nature and the Absolute, the
finite and the infinite. He arises out of the natural con-
ditions of existence, is bound up with these and is
subject to them in every fibre of his being. In so far as
he is a pure product of nature, he cannot realise the true
meaning and purpose of his existence. But he has from
the beginning an urge towards a higher perfection,
beyond his merely natural status. This urge produces a
disturbance of his natural harmony which is the product
of animal instinct, a convulsion of his life. A verse in
the Mahdbhdrata reads

RELIGION ; A PLEA FOR SANITY

161

amrtam chaiva mrtyuscha dvayam dehe pratisthitam I
mrtyiir dpadyate mohdt^ satyendpadyate amrtam M
By moha, by passion, by blindness, by folly, by infatua-
tion, we fall into death ; by satya, by truth, by loyalty,
by devotion, we gain amrta. To be born, to grow up,
to mate, to found a family and support it, would be a
human editjpn of animal existence. l*o live in the w^orld
of sense with the ideals of spirit is the privilege and
destiny of man, 7’o make out of common clay true
immortals who occupy themselves with human affairs,
even though they possess divine souls, is the religious
tradition of India.

The life of the tradition, the duration of the memory,
depends on the continuous appearance of creative spirits.
They keep the memory green ; they maintain the tradi-
tion alive. At the moment, however, there is such a
spate of spirituality in our country, that it has become
somewhat difficult for us to discriminate between the
genuine saint and the spurious one. I'here are many in
India, perhaps more than in other countries, who are
willing to impoverish themselves in every way to attain
the spiritual goal, and their credulity and hunger for
spirit are being exploited by clever adventurers who beat
the drum and bang the cymbals, indulge in publicity
stunts, to draw recruits. It is therefore essential to
exercise the greatest care and discrimination. I can only
set forth here a few considerations.

Firstly^ a true teacher has to be sought out. He is
not readily accessible to the public. He has no airs of
superiority and is not anxious for public recognition.

E. P. W. 11

162

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY

Those who aim at these rewards are not free from the
weaknesses to which you and 1 are subject. Saintliness,
when genuine, is marked by true humility and love. It
is difficult to find it in organizations which believe in
signboards and advertisements for their spiritual wares.

Secondly, the true teacher not only imparts instruc-
tion but transmits vitality. He helps to raise our being
to a higher level. lie demands from us, not blind faith
and implicit obedience, but alertness of mind and moral
restraint. If we are deliberately harnessed in blinkers,
or forced into a groove, our minds become muzzled, and
we cannot tliink freely. Spiritual insight is not anti-
rational. It may go beyond reason, but it is not against
reason. It is the deepest rationality of which we are
capable. In it we think more profoundly, feel more
deeply and sec more truly. The teacher who tells us,
“ Blessed are those who do not think but believe,’’ is
leading us astray. The (fpanisad says, *'tad vijnanena
paripasyanti dhirah, tad Brahma, vijiidnena, visistena
jiianena, paripasyanti sarvatah purnam pasyanti, dhirah
vivekinah.” The bold thinkers see Him by means of
knowledge. The Gita asks us to cross-examine even the
teacher ( pariprasnena ). Reason is the voice of God. • It
achieves its end by persuasion. Krishna, after stating
his views to Arjuna, tells him “ do as you please, yathec-
chasi tathd kuru^ Any teacher who fetters the freedom
of the pupil, who has no respect for his personality, is
not a true guide. Intellectual death is not the condition
of spiritual life.

Thirdly, we progress in pei faction only to the extent
we progress in purity of heart. We must purify our-

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY 1(>3

selves without ceasing. We are so full of wrong
notions, erroneous judgments, passion and malice. We
would he ashamed if we only saw ourselves as we really
are. Vanity, sensuality, attachment to our petty whims
and small comforts, cxtinguisli tlic lights which make
us see the dark sulc of ourscKes. In our blindness, we
flatter ourseKcs and invent a thousand excuses for our
weaknesses. If any one sn s a word about our faults, we
cannot bear him. He will roinse in us impatience, griet,
bitterness, furv- The glorification of self, 1 and mine,
in all the fickis ol life, individual and collective, leads
man into darkness and misery. To be truly free, one
must be vigilant in casting aside vanity and presumption.
Discipline is essential for human life. Whatever we may
call ourselves, Hindu oi Muslim, Sikh or Ch.ristian,
whatever doctrines we may profess, ll.eir essential charac-
ter as religious consists in the cifort to get rid of preju-
dices so as to see the truth, to get rid oi selfisl: passions
so as to do the right.

But, unfortunately, many of tliosc who have for
their profession the cure of souls, especially those of
weak and unstable nerves, practise a kind ol sorcery and
bewitch the emotional, the immature, the nervy, into
kind of magic sleep. They coni use spirit and sense,
religion and the powerful seductions of life. The teacl.er
is unconditionally obeyed and believed, and often
worshipped as a God . His moral or religious integrity
or depravity is not examined, but he is trusted for liis
saving power. This unthinking hero-worship has become
a pernicious influence on the religion of our country to-
day. No human being has the right to call upon us to

164

RELIGION : A PLEA FOR SANITY

believe in him blindly or surrender our moral scrupl
in obedience to his mandate. Only God can say “ sarv^
dharmdn parity ajya mdmekam saranam vraja.'' “ Ca
none your father on earth ; for one is your father who
in heaven. ” “There is no God but Allah. “ Thei
are no middlemen in religion.

The great religious tradition of India can be preser^
ed only if we avoid these two extremes of atheism an
blind faith, and strive for right thinking and right living
Tradition is memory ; it is humanity’s memory of ii
own past. This memory dies an artificial or accident;
death when it is forcibly interrupted. It dies a natun
death when it becomes crystallised and congealed. J
atheism succeeds, the tradition of India will suffer deal
by accident ; if blind faith and superstition overtake us
it will die a natural death, of old age, of hardening o
arteries. Let us, therefore, avoid these two extremes.

FREEDOM IS SOMETHING DEEP
AND ELEMENTAL*

Tt is the usual practice in our Convocation to get a
distinguished visitor to speak to the new graduates a tew
words of advice and exhortation. On account of troubled
conditions, we have not l>een able to secure any eminent
person to address this Convocation. So I have taken
upon myself the duty of saying a few words on this
occasion.

We must wake uj) from tlic sleep of centuries and
hold our heads high. India has a message for the whole
world. Her treasures of spiritual wisdom are for the lieal-
ing of nations. A nation that has produced such culture
and such men for centuries has a right to independence,
to shape her own future in keeping with her past. If
India wants freedom, it is for enabling her to teach the
world lessons of mor.il perfection and love. It is im-
possible for those who have not experienced foreign rule
to realize how deadening it is to the soul of the country.
Freedom is something deep and elemental. Speeches,
like those of the Prime Minister about there being in this
country a white army, larger than at any time in the
British connection, and he is, therefore, entitled to report
to the House that the situation in India at this moment
gives no occasion for undue despondence or alarm, are

• Address to the Convocation of the Benares Hindu University,
29th Nov. 1942.

165

166

FREEDOM : DEFP AND ELEMENTAL

liighly provocative. They burn into the Indian soul deep
resentment and bitterness.

A Programme more Positive than Repression

To preserve order is the primary duty of every
ji^overnment but it docs not stop there, '^rhere is another
obligation on a government to base its rule oi. the consent
and goodwill of the governed. It is the duty of a govern-
ment not only to maintain law and order but to create
conditions which make for law and order. We need a
programme, more positive than repression which is not an
aid to civil peace or war effort. 'The Secretary of State
for India said : “Indian nationalism, the desire to see
India’s destiny directed by Indian hands free from
external control, is not confined to any one party in India.
It is shared by all and to that aim we in this country have
solemnly pledged ourselves, before India and before
the world. In the name of His IMajesty’s Ch:)vernment ,
I repeat that pledge today.” But when the fulfilment of
this pledge is put aside to some future date in the name
of the war, doubts arise. We arc glad that the course of
the war has changed for the better and we hope very much
that it will end soon with the victory of the Allies.
But if we h ive to win it on the moral plane also where we
have the power, equality and freedom must be established.
In fighting for our rightful place in the Commonwealth
Of Nations, we should not sacrifice our inner wealth of
spirit, the inexhaustible richness of human sensibility.
If we give up the traditional courtesy of this ancient
race, if we fail in love and forgiveness, the soul of India
will have departed from this land. Nothing is lost if

FREEDOM : DEEP AND ELEMENTAL

167

the spirit lives. This world plunged into darkness will
wake up to the truth and come to its senses. Daylight
shall yet return, for time is boundless and the world
is wide*...

You will be the torch-bearers of the ancient spirit
of India for which this University stands. Remember that
the things we prize are not of ourselves, but exist by the
grace of the work, thought and sufferings of generations
of men. It is your task to conserve, to transmit, to
correct and enrich tlie ancient heritage of values you have
received so that those who come alter you may receive it
more solid, more secure, more widely accessible, more
generously shared than you hive received.

Education, a Training for Human Environment

Education is not a mere intellectual enterprivsc ; it is a
tiaining lor human environment, by civilizing our attitude
and refining our emotions. It is dedicated to social,
moral and intellectual ends. It initiates the pupil into
the traditional pattern of living in tlie race. India is not
to be the passive instrument of outsiders’ wills and
forces. We could borrow from others experiences but
we cannot build on them. We must, therefore, preserve
our individuality. To lose touch with tradition, is to
doom ourselves to mental ruin. If vve arc to play a
worthy part in the world we must know our spirit and
preserve it. India had passed through many valleys of
humiliation, but she has not entered the valley of death.
Her territory has been invaded, but her soul is unaffected.
India has been tested by many trials, strengthened by

168

FREEDOM : DEEP AND ELEMENTAL

many struggles, and made enduring by manly suffering
and long patience. A spiritual inspiration has been the
secret of her long life, of her immortality....

Let me now make a few comments on the Upanisad
text I read to you. The art of living is insisted on.
The pupil must not do anything which is questionable,
though it is done by many good people. Whatever duties
are blameless, he must be devoted to them. It is not
given to us to be perfect. In spite of our care and vigi-
lance, we may be guilty of lapses, we may he erring so
the teach says : do not imitate our failings. For leader-
ship and guidance, we must look to the conduct of the
wise, the finest and the most disinterested consciences
of which the nation is capable. When we are in doubt
about what is right, we must take for our guidance, what
is done in similar circumstances by Brahmins com-
petent to judge, apt and devoted, but not harsh lovers
of virtue.

Listen to Voices of the Wise

We must abstain from personal quarrels, and petty
bickerings. We must not play the partisan. Vengeance
is mine, I will repay, says the Christian Bible. The
guilt is due to the force of circumstances or impul-
siveness. There is nothing in the world which is com-
pletely divine, or hopelessly diabolic. Chance plays a
large part. Lastly, there is insistence on discipline,
on respect for superiors, on obedien e to authority.
It is the duty of pupils to listen to the voices of the
wise, to respect the wishes of elders and to carry,
out the prescribed duties.

FREEDOM ; DEEP AND ELEMENTAL

169

India never stood for national and cultural isola-
tion. Her spiritual heights rest on a basis that em-
braces all humanity. Whatever men love reason, shun
darkness, turn towards light, praise virtue, despise
meanness, hate vulgarity, kindle sheer beauty, wherever
minds are sensitive, hearts generous, spirits free,
there, is your country. Let us adopt that loyalty to
humanity instead of a sectional devotion to one part
of th^ human race.

UNIVERSITIES -

Your Highnesses, Your Excellency, Ladies and
Gengtlcmen :

May I, on behalf of the Universities of India, Burma
and Ceylon, request you Mr. Chancellor to convey our
grateful thanks to His Exalted Highness the Nizam of
Hyderabad, for his gracious message of welcome and good
wishes. 'Lo you Mr. Chancellor and the other authorities
of the Osmania University we are thankful for the ex-
cellent arrangements they have made for our comfort
and convenience, and the long excursions they have
organised for our education and entertainment. In the
few days we have been liere we have acquired some idea
of the past achievements and the future aspirations of
this great University . We have heard from you an out-
line of the plans for the educational development of this
State. 1 may assure you that we will watch with the
utmost sympathy and interest the future progress of this
University.

'riie last quinquennial conference was held at Bombay
in March, 1939 and the intervening period has seen
momentous events in human history. All those who are
sensitive to the horrors of modern wars, its unspeakable
sorrow and suffering and sacrifice, are asking whether w^e
cannot save ourselves from these periodic sanguinary

* Prebidental Address at the Quinquennial Conference of
Universities, December 1943.

170

UNIVERSITIES

171

upheavals, whether we cannot re-organise the founda-
tions of civilised life so ns to make the world safe for
humanity.

We rejoice in the Allied victories and fervently hope
that the new year may herald the approach of peace.
Speaking at Cairo last Wednesday, the Sth of December,
Field Marshal Smuts said that this would be the last
Christmas of the war. lie added : “ There must not ever
be a recurrence of these disasters which have devastated
human civilisation from age to age. I hope tluit all the
sacrifices made by the human race, colossal su fie ring,
will not have been in vain.” The most decisive years of
human history will not be so much the years of war cul-
minating in final victory as the period immediately follow-
ing it. In tlie last war many people accepted willingly
suffering and anguish and millions gave up their lives in
the hope of making the world safe for democracy and the
spirit of man. And in the years following the victory
their hopes were betrayed and- the peace was lost. We
passed through the fire but perished in the smoke. The
period between tlic two wars was one of incessant strain
and antagonism among nations manifesting itself in
diplomatic pressure, economic threats and open warfare.
Two world wars in one generation demonstrates clearly
that man as a social animal has failed. There is a feeling
of frustration which is more encouraging, than that of
complacency.

A great hope is sweeping across the earth to-day.
Millions are facing suffering and sacrifice sustained by
the conviction that the world will be made anew, that

172

UNIVERSITIES

enslaved humanity will be freed, that there will be a
great revolution in human history, and that common man
will have freedom from fear and want. Men and women
everywhere arc in the mood for sacrifice and are prepared
for essential changes. If the sequel to victory is not
to be frustration, the urge to return to the pre-war habits
and procedures in the relations among natioixs requires
to be checked. We need a re-cducation of human nature
and a reorganisation of our political and economic in-
stitutions. If victory is not to prove a mockery, if the
crisis, before which civilisation stands, is to be tided
over, if tlie forces of evil and retrogression which have
caused wars, are not to appear in other forms in other
lands, fundamental changes are required in the structure
and spirit ot society. If this great purpose beyond the
winning of the war does not animate the hearts and
minds of men and women, there is grave danger that our
plans to make the world sale may come to naught and
the world once more drift into war. Addressing the
Harvard University on 6th September of this year, on
the occasion of receiving the honorary degree of Doctor
of Laws, Mr. Churchill said, “ We must go on. It must
be world anarchy or world order.’' “Tyranny is our
foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears. Whatever
language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must
for ever be on our guard, ever mobilised and vigilant,
always ready to spring at its throat." If we fight for
empires and race domination, we fight on the wrong
side, we fight for tyranny and we belong with Hitler. In
one of his recent speeches, Mr. Churchill said: “What
we have, we hold." The Minister for Information,

UNIVERSITIES

173

Mr. Brendan Bracken, affirms that “ people, who maintain
that pre-war England is dead forever, are making a very
great mistake.’* These are tlie wc^rst portents for, the
future. If, alter victory, we revert to our past, if we think
of the future in terms of holding on to wliat we have, pre-
serving our privileges, maintaining our class position at
home and possessions abroad, this war is a ciiminal waste
and the world will be in Hames again il perchance we
might see better. Let us not take short views of our
self interest and glory and defeat the great hope and
vision of an ordered human society.

If our hopes arc not to be betrayed once again, we
have to defeat tyranny in the realms of thought and create
the will for world peace. The ii.struments for training
the mind and educating human nature should be used to
develop the proper social outlook without which institu-
tional machinery is of little use. The Brains Trust of
Great Britain was asked the question, Why is the effort
of propaganda for evil alw^ays great and insignificant
for good ? ” Many irrelevant answers were given except
the one that the propaganda for good has never been
seriously tried. Educational institutions w^ere used
to corrupt and not elevate the people. In former ages,
despots carried out their designs by disfranchising the
masses and making them slaves. To-day dictators exploit
the fear, the ignorance and stupidity of the masses,
twist and cripple their minds, and make mental slaves
01 them. No greater servitude can be imagined than
the way in which common people are compelled to work
and give their lives for causes w'hich they do not under-
stand, much less agree with, by leaders who drive them

174

UNIVERSITIES

like cattle and let them be slaughtered like game.
Children are born sincere and sympathetic. I’liey pos-
sess the native raw loyalty of man to man but instead of
strengthening these generous impulses our educational
systems warp their minds by offering them rallying
symbols of race, class or nation. They are made victims
of the religion of force, of the cult of blood, of the
contempt for the abstract, of the superstition of the
country, of the defeat of gentleness, of tlie betrayal of
faith. We are asked to live and die for anti-social and
fictional abstractions by ialsc propaganda which mas-
querades as education. The human longing to bv)ve,
to create, to take risks does not get a chance. Spon-
taneity dies, thought petrifies and the human in us
withers away. To conquer war, to make the world free
and safe, we need a sincere and inspired voice like
Jonah’s which would cry : “Be ye converted and repent
or Ninevah shall be destroyed.” Humility becomes us
all. A new technique, a revolutionary one has to be
adopted. Talking about the feud between the houses of
Capulet and Montague, Mercutio slain in the duel, in
the insight of the dying moment, cried ; “A plague o’
both your houses.” That bitter feud of one house
against the other was cut across by a love that broke the
vicious circle of its hate. In that final moment of the
play Capulet says : “ O Brother Montague, give me

thy hand.”

The Chinese have a saying: “ If you are planning
for one year, sow grain ; if for ten years, plant trees ;
but if you are planning for a hundred years, grow men
We must grow a new type of men and women for the new

UNIVERSITIES

175

society. This can be done in schools and colleges. The
newness does not depend on the cultural content we ac-
quire, but the spirit vvc absorb in educational institutions.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia can make whole nations
accept and live tor their ideas ol race and class. It does
not seem impossible that wx could create a torcc of opi-
nion which would stand lor justice, liberty and human
brotherhood. Anv direction given to the content of edu-
cation must start from the universities. They are to
make the soul ol a people. Th.eir task is not to supply us
with a detailed creed but give an outlook on life, an at-
titude of mind, that is - reverent to the eternal values
and responsive to the temporal events. 'Fhey should
strengthen the force of moral principles common to all
religions and ethical systems. Indian educationists
believe that the aim of education is to increase our aware-
ness of the reality of spiritual values, unseen by the
mortal eye, of the beauty and wisdom that the senses do
not perceive, which we can reach only by the mind or
the soul which we only apprehend inwardly. Scientific
discovery and invention have broken down the barriers
of time and space which all these centuries kept the
peoples of the world apart but the university spirit must
break down the forces of suspicion and self interest
which are as strong today as they ever were. Physical pro-
ximity has not meant spiritual approximation. We are
not yet mentally and spiritually prepared for the close
intimacy into which we are brought by the forces of
science and technology. This can be done only if we
give to education a humane and an international purpose.
The University men form a brotherhood of learning with-

176

UNIVERSITIES

out a doctrinal creed. This is the meaning of that ancient
phrase, the republic of letters. Recent exchanges of
students between China and India illustrate it.
No magic formula, no password, no political device can
lead us to peace. We must be educated into the
realisation of the truth that we are members one of
another. We must reach a unity of spirit before we can
get together for political unity.

It is university men with the universal spirit who
are necessary to build up the progressive life and thought
of our country. It is in the universities that we have to
develop the attitudes and dispositions, the ways of think-
ing and doing which will make democratic institutions
work. We are criticised as being unfit for democracy,
that we are victims of communal passions, that we do not
pull together even when external danger threatens us.
The extent to which these changes are valid is due to the
defective system of education which has grown up
haphazardly without any reference to the temperament of
the people or the conditions of the country. Education
is neither free nor compulsory at the lowest stages.
Children grow up incapable of an intelligent outlook or
independent thought. In the material and intellectual
realms we have made less progress in a century and a
half than other Eastern nations like Japan or even sub-
ject nationalities in Soviet Union in much less time.

We are grateful to Mr. Sargent for his scheme of
National Education. It is exceedingly modest, when
compared with educational achievements abroad. It
endeavours to provide a national system of education in

UNIVERSITIES

177

which, while every boy and girl will get a basic education,
children of special aptitudes and talents will have oppor-
tunities of higher education in schools and colleges,
general and technical, by means of a system of scholar-
ships and special places, flis programme aims at no
more than has been achieved in Britain and other countries
of the Wes4 and is the minimum lor wliich India ought to
plan in the post-war period of reconstruction.

The Inter-University Board had the opportunity of
considering his Memorandum so lar as it relates to
university education. For the teaching profession, for
the development ol tlic medical service, for the educa-
tion of scientists and engineers, for helping forward
industrial research and development, lor providing
leadership in public life, university education will have
to be strengthened in quality and quantity. The appli-
cations of science affect us all and if our national stand-
ards of living are to be raised, graduate and post-graduate
education will have to be developed. In 1937-38, the
United States of America had in her universities a mil-
lion students and a 100,000 whole time staff members,
while in Britain there were only 50,000 students. With a
population three times as large as Britain’s, America had
twice as many university teachers as Britain had students.
In India, we require larger numbers ol students at the
university stage than the Report suggests. I'hough the
sergent scheme is mainly intended for British India,
it is hoped that Indian States wdll implement the scheme
much earlier and help British India.

The architecture of the palatial Osfnania University
buildings where we find a happy blend of the Ajanta and
E. P. W. 12

178

UNIVERSITIES

the Moghul styles is, I take it, a symbol of the mutual
love and good will of the two great communities, Muslim
and Hindu. It indicates that in the universities at least
feelings of love and brotherhood among all communities
are fostered and a broad and liberal lolerance is deve-
loped. 'rhe future of India is bound up with the develop-
ment ol this attitude.

Hyderabad is the largest and tlie most important
Indian State, where tl\c peoples of dilferent creeds
could be brought togetherin a spontaneous unity,
sustained by the tradition of the Unity oi India. India
is, not a gcograjihical exprcssioTi, not a mere administra-
tive area in winch there is no force of tradition or
adequate cultural cohesion. India from the beginning of
her history has tried to respect all the great human
values and sought to unite them. It must he the special
obligation of the Ind ian universities to prfnnote cultural
unity and communal harmony.

Once again, Mr. Chancellor, I should like to thank
you and your University for all your kindness and con-
aideralion for us.

INDIA'S HERITAGE*

May I, on behalf of the Reception Committee of the
Twelftli Oriental Conference and the Benares Hindu
University, extend to you all a most cordial welcome.
When, last Jvnc, Protessor z\ltekar soiindeil me about
inviting the Conference to Benares, I did not encourage
the idea as we were not then quite certain about our own
atfairs. When, in tlic Puja vacation, Professors Ranga-
swami Iyengar and Nilakantha Sastri explained to me the
position, I lelt inclined to invite tlic Conference though
I was not unaware of the difficulties aliead of us, mainly
due to short notice. I was able to invite tliC Conlerence
to Benares as 1 could count on the goodwill and co-
operation not only ol tlic members of the University but
also of sucli tried Iriends as Hi^' Highness the ('hancellor
and the Pro-Chancellor, Maharajadhiraja ol Darbhanga
who is here with us today to open tlie Conference, the
Maharajakumar of Vizianag.ararn, whose palace is convert-
ed, on such occasions as this, into the unoflicial
guest-house of the University, and whose skill, inllucncc
and possessions arc at our service, Paja Baldeo Das Birla
and his sons, who know not only how to earn but what is
more important, how to spend.

These are war times and we are not wealthy and so
the Conference will be what it should be, it will take its
business more seriously and its luxuries less expensively.
At any rate, a Conference meeting in this sacred city

* Welcome speech at the Oriental Conference, December 1943.

179

180

India’s heritage

will, I hope, feel inclined to be a little austere in its
outlook and behaviour.

While I extend a cordial welcome to every one of the
delegates for the Conference, 1 should like to make
special mention of the representative of the Chinese
Government. We send, through him, our traternal greet-
ings to the Chinese Government. We have watched with
affectionate interest and admiration the courageous efforts
made by the Chinese Government to maintain educa-
tion and culture in the midst of a long and calamitous
war in which many universities and centres of learning
have been destroyed or damaged. If the world is to be
established once more in the ways of peace, it can only
be by the maintenance of high spiritual standards. In
this task, China and India have been close and friendly
partners for centuries. China received the religion of
the Buddha from India. Even in other disciplines like
science and philosophy, music and literature, art and
architecture, the influence of Indian culture is manifest.
Indian scholars went to China, spread the Arya Dharma
and translated Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into
Chinese. Many classical works of India are to be found
in Chinese translations. Chinese monks and scholars
came to India in successive waves in different periods for
learning the Dharma. Recently, the Chinese, who have
never been too proud to learn from any country, have
been going to Europe and America and contacts between
China and India have been somewhat dimmed. But the
exchanges of students and scholars, inaugurated this year
may prepare for a closer understanding between these
two great countries and bring about a spiritual awakening

India’s heritage

181

in the whole East. In the post-war years, India will again
attract pilgrims and scholars from the whole East and
what place is there in India more sacred than K^I ?

To a Conference which includes so many historians,
I need not talk at length on the antiquity and glory of
Benares. Ka^i is among the well-known cities which
help us to attain spiritual freedom.^ It is said that when
Brahma weighed the sky with its gods and Kasi with its
saints, Ka^I, being the heavier, sank down to earth by the
force of gravity while the sky being the lighter soared
upward.^ Benares has been the focus of an unbroken and
impressive spiritual tradition which is universal and
individual, embracing in thought the whole universe but
worshipping the eternal whose throne is the inmost shrine
of the human soul. In these days of darkness and travail
of spirit, I need not say how very vital it is for us to re-
member the values for which this city has stood. If we
turn to the Indus valley civilisation which the archaeolo-
gists have unfolded for us in recent times, we find there
something like the figure of Siva, in a typical attitude of
Yoga, calling upon all those wlio have ears to hear, the
inhabitants of the native land as well as invaders from
outside, who frequently pass and repass, to be kings not
over others but over themselves. Perfection is the goal
and the way to it is through self-conquest, through courage
and austerity, through unity and brotherhood in life.

1 ayodhya mathurii maya kasI kanci avantika
purl dvaravati caiva saptaita moU$aday ikah.

2. avarlokas tulitas sahaiva vibudhaih kasyasamam brahmana
kasi kso^italc sthita gurutara svargo laghutve gatah

Manikarnikdstotra.

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India's heritage

Perfection, moks<T is won through jnana or wisdom,
bodhi or cnliglitenment. Jesus said, “ Ye shall know the
truth and the truth will make you free Jnana of the
Hind US, hoclhi of the Buddhists, and truth of tlic Chris-
tians do not mean dialeetical fireworks, logical ingenuity.
It is not playing “intellectual ping-pong”, hut it is
growth in insight, increase of awareness, extension of
consciousness, evolution of soul. It is attained, not by
sharpening our wits but by steadying our mind. The
function of true plulosophy is to sec the truth and we
cannot see unless it be by unfettered contemplation,
wlicre eager wislics and yearning anxieties are stilled,
where tlie mind becomes a transparent medium which
mirrors the object without distorting it. We then become
what we behold. India has always empliasised the need
for spiritual illumination. Unless we are illumined from
the heights above, eartli-born intellect cannot take us far.

In the West, on tlie other hand, there has been a
steady insistence on tlie power of the human intellect to
discover the truth of things. When Socrates urged the
need for concepts and definitions, when Plato argued
that nobody need enter the Academy who liad not studied
Geometry, when Aristotle defined man, not as a spiritual
but as a rational animal, when the whole of Christian
scholasticism was one continuous deductive development
of dogma, when Descartes, the father of modern Euro-
pean philosophy, laid down as a maxim that no idea is
true which is not clear and distinct, when Spinoza set
forth his Ethics in the geometrical pattern, with postu-
lates, axioms and corollaries, when Leibniz outlined a
plan which later became the foundation of symbolic logic,

India’s ih-ritagf

183

when Kiint'^efTcctcci a revohit’on by makinj^ metaphysics
lake the sife load of science, when Hegel said that the
real was the rational and when liis successors ph.eno-
menaliscd the sell and tlic world, \\c find in tins wholes
development from Sociates to llcrtrand Russell impres-
sive variations on the one common tliemc ol the primacy
of the logiii'al.

Not tliat in India we neglected the logical. \Vc also
insist on tlie intelleclual apf>roach to the central prob-
lems of lilc, All alo bralmia jijnasa ; ntl ato dharmajij-
nasa. Th.c I’panisadas speak of manan.i, tl;e (rlta of
pariprasna. The Gita says “ Oi' tliosc who debate, I am
the dialectic ” \adah pra\adatam aharn. At a time like
this, when teachers are setting themselves up in all parts
of the country and requiring ol their disciples comjilctc
surrender of the intellect , it is well to b(‘ reminded of
the Indian tradition tliat intellect is to be satisfied ancl
not surrendered. Freedom and not slavery of the mind
is the pre-requisite of spiritual lile. But intellectual
fruition is in intiiiticm, \idya ends in anubhava.

In the West, there have been mystics and seers, the
Orphics and the hTcusinians, Plato and Plotinus, St. John
and St. Paul, tlie mediaeval mystics of Christendom and
Islam. But this permeation of the Western rationalism
by mystic tendencies has been, to no small extent, due
to the influence of India, the ideas oi the Upanisads, the
missions of Asoka and their follow^ers of later times.

To-day again, the world is in th.e grip of dry intel-
lect. It is very conscious of its good sense, of the in-
estimable blessings which science has conferred on

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humanity. It is proud that we have left behind the
stupidities of the dark ages, that it has escaped from the
misery and the degradation in which we were steeped for
centuries. Scientific intellect expected, not only to
unravel all secrets but even to transform human society.
We admit that the triumphs of reason are great, but its
failures are no less great. Something has escaped the
meshes of intellect, the magic of far horizons, the secret
of spirit, the pulse in the history of man, tlie beat in the
heart of the world. Pitiful as had been the lot of the
unlettered peasants, there was a ray of hope in their
hearts, a spark of poetry in their lives. Superstitious
they might have been, but they were not wholly forsaken.
The fanatical personalities who rule the world today, the
rationalist prophets, the intellectual celibates who are
the victims of the fictional abstractions of race and class,
tribe and nation, with their unbridled and endless
covetousness have built a world which is bereft of pity
and loveliness and is strident and murderous. The
world is on the rack and is bleeding to death. This
feverish age, wjiere life is lived at the higliest pressure,
teaches us, that while it is necessary to perfect the intel-
lect, it is even more necessary to refine the spirit. If the
present world convulsion is to emerge in a new and bet-
ter world order, we must acquire a living faith in love
and WMsdom. Here again the Orient with its distinctive
message of wisdom in education, of the need for quiet,
the quiet not of inaction but of harmony, of faith in the
ultimates which shine through the vast uncertainties hang-
ing over the march of life, can offer a corrective to the
miscarriage of the world. The world is one family and

India’s heritage

185

Its brotherhood of the future should be based on heart
and mind and not on chains and fear.

In our country today, the Oriental Conference can
be of immense value. By a scholarly appreciation of
India’s historical culture, by a proper estimate of the
interaction of the different races and religions, we can
bring about^ Renaissance based on the integrity of Indian
culture.

It is a pleasure to know that we have the Pandita
Parishad. These representatives of India’s classical
learning should he brought into close contact with those
who have received the shock and stimulus of western
knowledge and criticism. They should be reminded
that the great Pandits and Acaryas of old were the ambas-
sadors of India’s culture in distant lands. The Brah-
manical and the Buddhist monuments in Java, Bali, the
temple of Angkor, that symphony in stone, which is
perhaps the largest of its kind in the world, owe their
inspiration to Indian Culture. Those great ancestors of
our Pandits Vasistha, and Visvamitra, Kasyapa and
Kumarajiva, Nagarjuna and Samkara and countless others
worked not for political power or economic possessions
but for the spread of the spiritual message of India,
krnvantu visvam aryam. The evils from which we suffer
today are, to no small extent, due to our intellectual
inertia, moral cowardice, spiritual lassitude. Nature is
no friend of stagnation. For all our entreaties, the
world will not cease to revolve. Today we have to
reckon with the stresses, conflicts and confusions and
build fresh schemes with originality and freedom and in

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India’s heritage

the strength of the legacy of ancient wisdom. In this
world of samsara, there is nothing permanent but change.
Life is not life unless it is thrusting continuously into
new forms. In tlic s[nrit of our tradition, whicli is one
of cornpreliensioii and not witlidrawal, let us move for-
ward into the broader realm of responsibility for the
whole community.

We have today with us a worthy iMaithili Brahmin, a
direct descendant of the great Mahamahopadhyaya who
founded the Darbhanga Raj, a great lover of Indian
Culture and a generous patron ot this University. It is
our good fortune that such a friend of the studies wdiich
the Oriental Conference represents is here to inaugurate
the twelfth Oriental Conference. I now' request him to
open the Conference,

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS"

Mr. CuANcriLOR, Laiiiis and CJfntlfmtn,

May J sa\ how uratcful J am to tlic LTiiivcrsily
authorities for their kiiulness in asking me to speak at
this Convocation ? It is a pleasure lor me to repeat* on
some excuse or oilier, my visits to tliis llniversity, where
I spent t]>e best part of my life. I should have addressed
this Convocation last year but an unfortunate illness
stood in the way. 'rhanks to the kind care and attention
of your Vice-Chancellor and another member ol your
Senate Dr. Sivapada Ilhattacharya, 1 speedily got over
it. It is indeed very kind of tlic I'liiversily to ha\e
renewed its invitation this year and given me this
opportunity.

It is my agreeable duty to olFer warm greetings and
good wdshes to the young men and women who have had
degrees conferred on them today. They are going out
into the world at a very critical time which is dynamic
with great possibilities. University men, along with
others, have had a testing time, '^bhis province is not
yet free from the effects of one of the worst famines
within living memory ; the country is drifting into a
broken and helpless condition and is in a mood of sour
disillusion and the world convulsed with the agony of
war has much fear for the future. It is my fervent hope

• An address to the convocation of the Calcutta University 4th
March 1944.

187

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BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

that the education which you have received in this
University and its colleges may help you to play your
part effectively in the remodelling of your life and
society in years to come.

This war has exposed the weakness of our Govern-
ment, of our economic life, and our system of /'iducation.
The death, in conditions of peace, of a million people
due to famine, even if we accept the figure given by the
Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons,
is not essentially different from or less costly than the
death of a million people in any other part of the world.
If we realise what this means in terms of human suffering
and sorrow, we should be filled with shame and resent-
ment and a burning desire to wipe out the conditions
which make such things possible. The British Govern-
ment has not yet divested itself of its responsibility
for the Government of India. The country is richly
endowed by nature with manpower, skill, talent and
material resources. The example of other countries
demonstrates that it is possible to increase the producti-
vity of the soil, to control unemployment and destitu-
tion, and to raise the level of life. The diminished
vitality of the people who live on a bare subsistence
level, with’ no margin at all to provide for the failure of
crops and other contingencies, who are largely without
education, and suffer from low standards of public
health and sanitation, points to the economic and political
degradation of the country. A well-planned and vigor-
ous economic expansion, involving the introduction of
modern technical and industrial methods of producing

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

189

goods and services, an all-out development of education
and public health alone can give relief to a long-suffering
people and restore national vitality. We are not re-
volutionary by instinct but may become so by necessity.
Revolutionary plans are apt to gather force, if the
general community feels that serious attempts are not
being madg to redeem the people from conditions of
poverty and squalor. Burke said : “ Revolutions are
produced not by those who lack power but by those, who
holding power make bad use of it.”

We require to transform the habits of people and their
ways of thinking. A social revolution means an educational
revolution. Education should have priority among the
schemes of reconstruction now' being considered. Social
security, communications, health and sanitation are all
important, but education wdiich is concerned with the
making of men is the most important. If w'e do not
have the right kind of citizens, none of the other schemes
will work successfully. No political arrangement can
enfranchise a people, no industrial expansion can enrich
them, no social privileges can assist them, if we do not
have men and w'omen with free minds and upright
characters. An educational system, which believes in
the freedom of the mind and the validity of character, is
the most important part of any sound national planning.

Mr. Sargent’s report gives us a comprehensive
scheme of education for all stages from childhood to
maturity and attempts to make the educational system
organic to the community. It proceeds on the principle

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BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

which is accepted by all civilised governments that it is
the fundamental obligation of tlie state to provide all
its citizens with compulsory education from the age
of 6 to the age of 14 at least, "t makes provision for
different kinds ol instruction for children of ditferent
aptitudes and temperaments, and provides large scope
for choice. It is a long term national enterprise and its
full realisation wdll take at least a generation and de-
mand the sustained efforts of the community and effective
co-operation between the Government and other agen-
cies. If India is not to lag beliind other progressive
countries the scheme must be put through. The usual
excuse for doing nothing, poverty is urged against it.
Addressing the Annual meeting of the .A^ssociated Cham-
bers of Commerce in this citv on the 20tli December,
1943, His Excellency the Viceroy said “ 1 think it is
clear, that, from fl c practical point of view, the full
realisation of a scheme such as that outlined in the
Sargent Report, must wait on other developments. India
at present simply has not the money for such a scheme.”
How can the national wealth of the country be increased
if we are not given the education which alone can
equip us to increase the w^ealth ? The expense must be
incurred and the money found. In a speech which Lord
Wavell gave in London just before he left England for
India to assume the Viceroyalty, he said : “It has
always seemed to me a curious fact that money is forth-
coming in any quantity for a war, but tltat no nation
has ever yet produced the money on the same scale to
fight the evils of peace — poverty, lack of education,
unemployment, ill health/’ It is a pleasure to know

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

191

that in his address to the Central Legislature, he re-
marked that “ the vital matters of liealth and education
will not be allowed to stand still But this negative
assurance is not enough, liducational expansion is the
foundation of all reconstruction and the money for it
must he found.

An Indian Government with the confidence ot the
people will be able to raise the sums essential for the
national etfort of educational and industrial expansion.
The Viceroy tells us that the ])resent (Jovernment of
India is “mainly an Indi in Government’’. The presence
of a number ot eminent Indians does not make the
Government a national one. Who lays down the policy ?
Who wields the power ? Thie Viceroy stilted thait the aim
of His Majesty’s Government is to see India a united
country, enjoying complete and unqualified sell-govern-
ment as a willing partner of the British Commonwealth.
But a mere declaration of principle does not right a
wrong. We sometimes believe tl.at wlien ;i thing has
been said it has been done. The complacency with which
the British Government falls back on the disagreements
among Indians, is a distressing feature. Speaking at the
East India Association, Lord h^rskinc said : “ Parliament
is responsible for the good governme n of the Indian
Empire and it would be a betrayal of our trust, were we
to allow the difficulties of the situation to turn us from
our declared purpose of leading the Indian peoples to
full self-government.” Surely if the difficulties do not
embarass the Government in the effective prosecution of
the war with this province as the chief base for operations

192

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

against Japan, are they so formidable as to prevent the
establishment of a national Government in India, with
effective safeguards during the period of the War ? We
do not deny that the progressive forces of the country
spar between themselves for shadowy differences in
ideals and they lose the benefits which might be won for
the people by concerted action, but is /'o-operation
among the parties facilitated by the helpful action of the
Government ? The w^orld looks upon India as the
supreme test of British statesmanship and sincerity of
purpose. The best answer to the Nazis is to stand up
and perform according to the ideals we profess. The
problem will become acute at the end of the war if full
self-government is not established by then. There are
over two million Indians :in the fighting services with
about 10,000 officers and another six millions are engaged
in factories doing war work. Thousands are being trained,
as officers for the fighting services. They are getting
into contact with the soldiers of the Allied nations and
are being imbued wdth the ideals’ of liberty and humanity,
and when they return, they should not be faced with
bitterness and disillusion.

India is not indifferent to the issues of this war, not-
withstanding her political differences with Great Britain.
The ultimate issue of this war is not properly defined as
a conflict between rival imperialisms due to the clash of
economic interests between the Haves and the Havenots
among the nations. It is not a conflict between rival
forms of government, a duel between democracies and
dictatorships. With Russia among the Allies such a claim

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

193

cannot be sustained. It is really a conflict between the
future and the past, between international order and
justice and international anarchy and injustice. India
knows that the victory of the Axis powers will mean fear
and death and the destruction of all values, moral, cul-
tural and social, while the victory of the Allies has possi-
bilities of Ijope and life. Millions in the flower of their
youth have given up and are giving up happiness, health
and life itself, they are suffering the pangs ol separation
from their homes, discomfort, exposure, torture in order
that the world may be a better, kinder and juster place
than it has been. While the phrases of Stalin’s declara-
tions, the Atlantic Charter and Roosevelt’s proclamations
about the four freedoms raise high hopes, the perform-
ances of the Allies do not measure up to the professions.
The greatest surprise of the war has been Russia’s heroic
resistance to Nazi aggression but what will be the contri-
bution to peace of a Russia which has grown nationalistic
in sentiment, orthodox in religion and somewdiat indiffer-
ent to the victory of the Proletarian revolution? The
recent declaration of autonomy for the sixteen Soviet
Republics, which will have their own armies and foreign
representatives, is interpreted by some as an excuse,
if not a justification, for annealing invaded countries
without protest from their peoples and the Allied nations.
I very much hope that this view’ is a misjudgment.
What wdll be the attitude ot America’s Big Business?
Will Mr. Churchill who is so insistent on preserving
“ traditional Britain ” help to remove the fear of w'ar
from the heart of humanity ? Even while we are marching
towards victory, there are grave anxieties on the political
E. P. W. 13

194

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

field and many suspect that the war is once again yielding
to its inherent cruelty and narrowness of vision. War
exerts a constant lowering pressure on our ideals and
makes us ignore them in practice. "^I'liere is a tendency
to fall back into the old system of power politics, aggres-
sive alliances and rival imperialisms. Among the masses
there is a deep sense that with victory will cofr\t disillu-
sion. The Archbishop of Canterbury said on the 23rd of
March, 1943, “ Horrible as it is, w'e have to realise that
multitudes of our people actually Icar the return of peace
more than the continuance of war.” Think of that. If
the military victory is to be follow’ed by a post-war period
of noble professions and craven deeds, as it happened
in the last war, the enormous price w'c pay for it, will be
paid in vain and it wdll be a sacrifice of the best for the
w'orst.

If this tfar w'hich has no boundarises except those
which God in His mercy has given to the w^orld, results in
a close searching of hearts, if it ends not only in a victory
over the external enemies but over inner sloth, slack-
ness and selfishness, it wdll mean a new dawm for mankind.
We must be cured of our dangerous obsessions and
distorted view's. The forces that are to renew the face of
the earth, must spring from men’s hearts. Deliverance does
not come from outside. The sword can impose it but can-
not develop it. W^e must learn the lesson that all mankind
is one. The oppression, persecution of any race wounds
and menaces all. Another country’s distress or discon-
tent is our country's danger. We must become great of
soul and rid ourselves of race prejudice and love of

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

195

power. The Atlantic Charter asks us to work for “a
peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwell-
ing in safety within their own boundaries and which will
afford assurance that all moi in all lands ina^ live out
their lives in freedom from fear and want.” Suc h faith is
vain witliout works and works require that we should rid
ourselves erf the obsessions w’hich are inadequate to the
changing conditions of life. Our minds must be lifted
out ol the rut of ]^asi habit. Only then can \\c build
up a great human society fostering and tleveloping the
cultural resources of the dilTcreut peoples. Wendell
]j. Wilkie observes : “ Ifrilliant victorie s m llic field \v ill
not win lor us this war now^ going on in the far reaches
of the vvorld : only new men and new' iil eas in the machi-
nery of our relations with the people.^ of the hast can
win the victory, witliout whicli any pc.icc will he only
another armistice.” All our l.opcs will he Irustrated
if the statesmen who w ill woi k at the peace conlerence
are not inspired by a spiritual purpose and love lor the
common man.

I'he world crisis is only superficially economic and
political, it is essentially moral and spiritual. War is a
symptom, not a disease. It can be removed only by
curing the spiritual condition of society. ‘‘ Without
virtue,” Aristotle said, “ man is merely the most dan-
gerous of the animals.” By calling on men to be better,
we cannot make them better. Through schools and
colleges, through the social and poht'cal institutions
they must be moulded into proper shape, and made new.
The Nazi and the Bolshevist systems of education have

196

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

been largely successful in engendering a radically new
type of man. Education is the means to it. The world
crisis means that there is a demand for a revision of aims.
Sir Ricliard Livingstone in his work on the Future in
Education sets forth admirably the nature of the present
crisis : “ Our present situation reveals the great need of
the world. If the conventional stranger /from Mars
arrived in Europe this moment — after a journey through
the air more hazardous than usual— he would not so much
be surprised by the fact that a war is in progress, for war
unfortunately is nothing new, but he would be struck
by something far more serious, by the appearance of a
new philosophy of life.” He refers to the disappearance
of moral and religious ideas of liberty, justice and truth
which have helped us to tame barbarism. The essential
aim of education, according to the ancient Indians and
the Greeks is initiation into the higher life of spirit.
It is to be reborn. The whole soul must be turned round
towards the light, Plato tells us, so that its eye may
receive the truth. Only tlien can we have the right out-
look on life. Where there is no vision, the people
perish ; for lack of restraint, the rule of law lapses and
the community falls into chaos. While the power of
controlling th.e forces of nature has increased enormously,
our power to control human nature has scarcely advanced.
In science and technology w'e have made tremendous
progress but all these forms of progress do not relieve
man of his burden of the inner world. The external
inarch of things does not alter the inward struggle.
The mechanical devices and even psychological techni-
ques do not touch the inner deeps. A pride in our own

BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

197

past has been our chief defect. A little humility will do
us great good. Humility, it is said, is to know the truth
about oneselL We must face the naked truth tliat we
are prone to put the interest of our family or groups
higher than those of the general community. We are
inclined to exaggerate our own wrongs and secure our
interests aUthe expense of other people. “ Hear ye one
another’s burdens” is spoken of nations as of individuals.
True greatness is a quality of soul ; it is humanity. 'I'l^e
truly educated arc those who are ti.eir own masters,
whose minds do not fall an e.isy prey to half-truths, preju-
dices or interested propaganda, who have enough poise
to distinguish between a rational argument and a mass
appeal to passion. In a university we are members
of a great company by whose law of compassion and
justice we are protected and bound. Dharmo raksati
raksitah. We should strive after a purified and ennobled
patriotism which will disdain to use wrong methods
even for saving a nation.

What makes a nation is not race or religion but a way
of life. India is not a geographical expression, nor is
it a collection of individuals. It is a tradition, an order
of thought and manners, a loyalty to certain fundamental
values, fostered by all races and religions which have
found a home in this land. We should not be seduced
from adherence to these great values by the bribes of
comfort or pleasure. In a rapidly changing w'orld, it is
not easy to think or speak of things which do not change,
the foundation of the good in us, the faith in spirit,
the beauty of action and the endurance of life’s charges.

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BENGAL FAMINE AND INDIAN POLITICS

But ultimately, these are the forces which will forge
the future of humanity. Wc cannot fight against tlie gods.
India cannot and has no desire to lead the world by
virtue of Iier military strength or industrial efficiency.
Nations hereafter must tliink less about domination
and more about service and we believe that India and
China have a special contribution to make in a period
of political and social reconstruction. If you are to
write with honour a new^ chapter in our history, you
must develop respect for those values wlucli are neither
national nor international but universal, 'ri.e future
of humanity is bound up with the regeneration of the
deeper foundations without which no political structure
can last and tl.c growth of a new loyalty to the world-
community. India’s present condition is a challenge
and an opportunity. It is my hope and faith that you
shall not be found lacking in vision, courage and strength
to meet that challenge and use that opportunity.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL SERVICE*

I greatly appreciate tl.e l.onor which the authorities
of this school have clone me in asking me to speak to
them to-ciay. It is a matter of regret to me that I was
not able uraccept their invitation in previous years. To-
day I have an opportunity to pay my tribute of admira-
tion to the 'I'atas, not only for tlieir great cnter})rise in
the industrial life of our country, but also for the wisdom
with which they devote a good part ol their fortune to
the service of the public, of which this school is an
illustration. I have addressed several convocations of
established universities without feeling much emharass-
ment but this function gives me a good deal of uneasiness
as I am not sure about the line I sho\ild adopt in
addressing young men and women who have had two
years of training in methods of social work and welfare.
Neighbourhood House on one side and the Tata School
on the other suggest the theme ; Religion and Social
Service.

What is social work ? In a sense all departments of
State, medicine, law, engineering, education, health arc
public service institutions. All activities wdiich are more
than egoistic are social ; even activities which are ap-
parently egoistic have social effects. The solitary hermit
who saves himself by his effort saves the world by
his example.

• An address delivered on 10-4-1944 to the Sir Dorabji Tata
Graduate School of Social Work.

199

200

RELIGION AND SOCIAL SERVICE

We may define service as any action which helps
others at a cost to oneself. The cost may be in time,
thought or money. If wc spend any of them on tlie
needs of others, we do service. To visit the lonely, to
comfort the needy, to listen patiently to other people's
worries, to undertake voluntarily uninteresting jobs is
to do service. Wc do it with pleasure, if \\s care for
and love humanity. Love expresses itself in service.
7'he greatest servants of humanity are those who love and
suffer for it, Buddha, Jesus, vSt. Francis, Gandhi. To
love is to suffer. The more we love, the more we suffer.
Infinite love is infinite suffering. So even God is re-
presented as a sufferer. Siva is Nilakantha ; Clirist has
a crown of thorns. Wc pray to God as the great helper
of humanity, to give food to the hungry and drink to
the thirsty, to comfort the mournful, cheer the dismayed,
strengthen the weak, deliver the oppressed, and give
hope and courage to them that are out of heart.

As such a conception ot God sometimes encouraged
men to throw the burden on God and themselves withdraw
from the scene of mankind's social agony, religion came
to be regarded as a sort of escapism, a flight from society.
Religion, it is said, seeks for supernatural guidance in
the solution of social problems. Even as the worried
seek the aid of astrologers, the troubled and the for-
lorn seek the guidance of God. Tl:e old sea-Captain
said to a frightened passenger in a storm, “ So long
as the sailors are swearing. Ma'am, we are alright ; if you
hear them praying, put on your life-belt." W4ien we
do not see any way out, we get afraid and turn religious.
We are afraid in two ways : We are frustrated by nature

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and by society. The ultimate frustration of all is
death ; and the social frustration is due to poverty and
social injustice. Marx puts it: “'The omnipotence
of God is nothing but the fantastic reflection of the
impotence ot people before nature and before the
economic social relations created by themselves.’’ The
remedy for 4rustration by nature lies in the extension
of our control over nature by science. The remedy
for the frustration by economic injustice lies in social
revolution.

Tliere arc certain elements of truth in Marx's analy-
sis, though he exaggerates them. Religion, it is true,
is resorted to by those who refuse to face the prol^lems ;
it has been used to distract men’s attention from science,
and the rich have used to keep the poor contented, and
yet this is not the real meaning of religion. Tt wc
ask why the phenomenon oj religion arises, we will find
that it is due to the rise of intellectuality at the luiman
level. There is a break in the normal and natural order
of things due to the emergence of self-conscious reason.
The rest of nature goes on in absolute tranquillity but
man becomes aware of the inevitability of death. The
knowledge of death produces the fear of death. Who
shall save me from the body of this death? Buddha’s
religious sense was stirred by the sight of an old man,
a diseased man, a dead nrm and a mendicant. Why
should there be death and disease ? Can this feeling of
frustration be remedied by science ? Grant that we can
anticipate the course of nature and to some extent con-
trol it. Can nature be tamed to do man’s bidding ?
Her blind caprices, her storms and tempests, her cyclones

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and earthquakes will continue to shatter his work and
dash his dreams. Can science alter the limits of man’s
life and his body? “Thou fool, this night shall thy
soul be required of thee.” The Bhagavadgitd says that
all created beings liavc an unknown beginning, a known
middle and an unknown end ( 11. 28 ). The dark spaces
arc tliere and except for those who refusp to think,
the mark of ignorance remains. Inward security cannot
be achieved through science and technology. The
frustration by nature is something common to all, rich
and poor. If religion is a device to soothe the sorrows
of the human heart, if it is a drug to soften the tragic
sense of human life, so long as science cannot answer
the question, “If a mm die, shall he live again ?” so long
as the fear of death is a common anxiety, religion has
a place in human life.

Marx refers to social injustice. Man’s innocence,
his sense of fellow-feeling, his at-oneness with the uni-
verse is disturbed by the development of self-conscious-
ness and self-will. He puts his individual preferences
above social welfare. He looks upon himself as some-
thing lonely, final and absolute and treats every other
man as his potential enemy. He becomes an acquisitive
soul adopting a defensive attitude towards society. He
fears every footstep he hears and trembles at every
unexpected knock at the door. Though he is by nature
social, he often prefers his individual advantage to the
interests of the social order. The moral evils of falsity,
pride and treachery arise. Animals do not wage wars as
men do. The fear of physical evil, death, moral evil.

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selfishness breaks up his unity, distracts his mind and
clouds his vision. How can this disintegration of man’s
self, this conflict with nature and society be overcome ?
How can this fall from harmony be restored to unity ?
How can we get fearlessness or abhaya, wlio can tell us
‘ ma ^Licah,’ be not afnid ? How can we rise from a
disrupted consciousness to a harmonised one, from divi-
sion and conflict into freedom and love ? How can we
build a world of freedom and love and be released from
the present world of fear and hate ?

Marx tells us that the improvement of social condi-
tions is essential, That there is much need for that in
our country, goes without saying. Sir William Beveridge
said the other day that Great Britain liad to fight the five
giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.
If, with its high standard of living, extensive medical
relief, wide-spread education, Great Britain has to tackle
these problems, the case for a drive against want, ignor-
ance, disease, poverty and squalor is very much stronger
in this country. There are millions who have never slept
on a bed or taken a cooked meal, millions who accept
dirt and vermm as their natural environment. Our social
institutions must be so altered as to give each human
being a chance for full self-expression and all the hind-
rances to human development due to ignorance and bad
surroundings require to be removed. Any government
which realises its elementary responsibilities to the
governed will have to tackle this task of improvement of
public health and sanitation, development of education
and rapid application of science to agriculture and Indus-

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try more seriously than heretofore and even governments
can he shamed into activity by private enterprise. India
is no more in that mood of fatalistic resignation which
accepts poverty, squalor and unemployment as unavoid-
able. Tagore paid special attention to rural develop-
ment and Gandhi has insisted on it. In the villager
where the large majority of our people live;, there are
not adequate facilities for the education ol children, for
the fostering of village industries, for medical relief and
cultural growth. We must rouse the minds of the villa-
gers, it we are to vitalise village life.

Even if we bring about widespread education, im-
prove methods of agriculture, apply modern industrial
technique to the problems of production and distribution,
and raise the standard of life, the need for social work
and service will not diminish. All the outward conditions
may be present and yet decent and dignified human
life may not be possible. A planned life in which our em-
ployment is compulsorily provided tor us, in which we are
deprived of our responsibility not only for our own lives
but also for the care and welfare of our families, which
involves the maximum of social security is no compensa-
tion for the loss of individual responsibility and freedom.
Field Marshal Smuts says, “ Liberty in its lull human
sense, freedom of thought, speech, action, self-expres-
sion *- there is less to-day than at any time in the past
two thousand years.” For a civilised existence, both
security and freedom are essential. Every human being
should be guaranteed sufficient food and clothing and
adequate housing but we should recognise that the needs

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205

of men are not merely material. If we do not have an
atmosphere of freedom, we become professionals, law-
yers or doctors, engineers or teachers hut we cease to be
human beings. We lead unnatural lives, which are
empty and burdensome. If we scorn the spirit, our acts
will have no joy and our life no serenity.

This war is a symptom ol the inward disease from
which we arc suffering. Its springs are in the invisible
world. Wliy are there slums in liombay } VV^hy was
there a famine in Ilengal ? Why arc there Hindu-Muslim
conflicts ? Wliy have the Leagues of Nations, the Dis-
armament Conferences, and other world movements
failed ? Why do nations which can live in peace and
adjust their differences by negotiation resort to wars with
all their sorrow, desolation and misery ? Imagine the
amount of suffering which wars produce. Leave aside
the dead but look at the maimed, the bereaved, the
exiled, the anxious and the ruined, the millions who are
bewildered, broken and bereft of faith and hope. I’hc
foundations of social life crumble, the standards of
behaviour break down and barbarism is let loose.

For all this widespread misery, it is no use con-
demning any individuals or group of individuals. If an
idiot commits a murder, we arc shocked by his act but
we do not hate him because we feel that here is a human
being from whom fate has taken aw^ay the birthright of
discrimination and judgment. Those responsible for
this greatest of all evils, the world-war, are not a few
individuals or groups but a general way of life. Our

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enemies are as much the products of their environment
even as we are. Take the Germans who are fighting
against us in this war. They grew up in an atmosphere
of violence. They were taught at hoire and school that
duty and honour meant vengeance on Germany’s enemies
and when they came of age, they found that Hitler was
in power and the doctrine of vengeance was consecrated
as the state religion. With so many years of teaching
behind tliem, if they grow mad, can we hold them
responsible ? They are our neiglihours and need our
help.

We are to-day filled with the hope of final victory
but are uncertain and anxious about the peace settlement.
The last war was won and the militarists whose ex^
istence was threatened by talks of disarmament and
diplomats, who felt that their occupation would be gone
if the League of Nations succeeded, kept the fires of
hate burning. This peace will end in frustration, if
we hide from ourselves our real faults by a smokescreen
of righteousness. Unless wt instruct ourselves in the
processes which lead to wars and attempt to remove
them, military and political measures by themselves,
will not achieve much. Temporary expedients may re-^
suit in intervals of peace, but cannot achieve" permanent
security. The old institutions w^hich have brought death
and despair to successive generations are dead at the
roots. We want a new world where freedom does not
mean freedom to exploit fellowmen and culture does
not mean intellectual dope. The root causes of universal
failure, greed and selfishness, individual and collective.

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207

require to be removed. This can be done only by a
revolutionary change oi outlook and will, a rebirth of
spiritual life. We must cultivate tlic qualities that
separate man from the beast, love of truth, pursuit of
goodness, sensitiveness to beauty, compassion and toler-
ance, and not those which \vc share with the animals,
lust, cruelty and greed, (ralsworthy writes “ Men may
have a mint ot^t(?rling qualities, be \igoious, adventu-
rous, brave, upright and self-sacrificing ; be preachers
and teacliers ; keen, coolheaded just, industrious -- il llicy
have not the love ot beauty, they will be still making
wars.*’ Here (ialswortliy is asking us not to I'c con-
tent with a closed scientific rationalism. Science has
given a distinctive cast and colour to the modern con-
sciousness. It has added to the scope and stature ot the
human mind. Its gains are incalculable, its increasing
application to agriculture and industry will raise the
level of human welfare, but science is not all. "ilic
scientific approach is not tlic only approacli to reality ;
nor is it the most important. A human being is not
a ditferenlial equation. So long as we study human
beings logically, psychologically or s()ci(>logically , we
deal with them in fractions and 'not as wholes. 'The
Ivndamental reality of life is in the interplay, conflict
Hind continuous adjustment of a multitude of different
Ifinite points of view. Each point of view requires to be
treated with respect. “ Tlie materialist,’’ says Edding-
ton, “ must presumably hold the belief that Ids wife
is a rather elaborate differential equation, but lie is
prbbably tactful enough not to obtrude this opinion in
domestic life.” The scientific view of man requires

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to be supplemented by the religious which regards a
human being as a spark of spirit, a ray of the divine.
We must develop faith in man as subject rather than as
object, a source of creation and inspiration and not a
passive product of social surroundings. Man is made
in the image of God. He is a creator. Human nature
must be lifted out of its immediate urgencies and local
needs and taken up to the high places of life, from which
it can see and understand the meaning of life. Until
th is faith is followed by works, we will not have true
democracy. Walt Whitman said, “ Democracy is a great
word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten,
because that history has yet to he enacted.”

While science will add to the richness of life, social
improvement will make creative life possible. Even
then most women and many men will remain lonely,
damped and worried. Many will still be without zest
for life and without freshness in vision. They wdll
require not curiosity but understanding, not sermons
but sympathy, a lively perception and a sharing of
each other’s sorrows, a bearing of one another’
burdens. 1 hope v^y much that in this school firFjj
things are placed first. I wish all those who go out inti
life from here, useful and beautiful careers for whic^
there is so much scope to-day.